Beleaguered Microsoft customers: Streamline your licensing

Microsoft must simplify its licensing by putting sales targets second. That’s according to the Campaign for Clear Licensing, which reckons the way Microsoft charges for its software is “unnecessarily complex”. “The bundling of products benefits sales objectives over customer requirements,” CCL said in a white paper on its …

[Anonymous Coward]

I find MS licensing to be very clear and explicit, the trick is to actually read their documentation which includes clear, diagrammed examples in most cases which walk you through the options. If you can't understand it after that, ask a licensing partner for help - we often save people millions on SQL Server alone with a very short engagement to suggest optimisations.

Yes, it's trendy to say it's complicated, but really it's not. Yes it could be made easier if they removed all the options, but they are a business trying to make money so they make cheap options for customers who need them and expensive options for large customers who need the features.

[Anonymous Coward]

how about the SME's then?

Who can't afford (or don't spend enough) the services of people such as yourself.

Then the FAST prople swoop down on them and the poor SME who has bought something in good faith has to cough up thousands because the didn't buy enough CALS.

MS really does need to make it simple for normal people (not licensing specialists) to work out what to buy.

Not everyone is like you.

[Pompous Git]

Re: how about the SME's then?

Another change then? Back in the day, when a business was discovered by MS to possess insufficient licences, they were granted a period of time to "get legal". Only if they were recalcitrant were fines imposed. All rather civilised I remember thinking.

[dogged]

Re: how about the SME's then?

> Back in the day, when a business was discovered by MS to possess insufficient licences, they were granted a period of time to "get legal"

That hasn't changed. I think it's about six months, as a general thing. I agree with the study that licensing on many MS products is not so much byzantine as an outright tribute to MC Escher (no kids, that's not a rapper) - especially those products which no offer a hosted Azure alternative.

I can't help wondering whether that's deliberate.

[Pompous Git]

Re: how about the SME's then?

not so much byzantine as an outright tribute to MC Escher

Well that's a relief then. While I am fond of Escher's work and possess many reproductions of his works, I do remember muttering the word "Byzantine" during that long ago briefing while munching on a truly delicious samosa. I wasn't involved in the server-side of things and later asked my partner why he had suggested I come along. "In the hope that you could make sense of it all," was his reply. Sadly we both remained perplexed and basically crossed our fingers and hoped that we were doing the best for our clients. Glad I'm out of it frankly...

[Smoking Gun]

Re: how about the SME's then?

Better still how about a better method of licence management.

It's always amazed me how the worlds largest software provider effectively works on a Trust basis backed by enforcers like PWC and Fast to audit and threaten.

VMware, Citrix, many others I work with seem to have a much better method for licensing management, allocation, revocation.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: how about the SME's then?

"Not everyone is like you."

Be fair. He's got a job to protect.

Mine's the one with a copy of the GPL in the pocket.

[Pompous Git]

I find MS licensing to be very clear and explicit

Things must have changed over the years then. I vividly recall a MS briefing on server licence changes given by Tech Pacific many years ago. Must have been immediately prior to the release of Win2k. The woman giving the presentation managed to confuse most of us I think. But the samosas and coffee were very good as usual. Even better was her handing out free copies of CorelDRAW! 8 as I hadn't upgraded from ver. 7 yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe that to be the case then you really haven't looked into it closely enough. Whether they give examples or not, the item that is relevant is the licensing agreement which is broad, non specific and full of opportunities for you to trip up.

For instance, do you use Windows DHCP to allocate IP addresses on your WIFi network to guests who are just browsing the web? Then each guest who strolls by needs a CAL (according to Microsoft*)

Can you effectively run a modern Microsoft IIS website that has any sort of back end for a databases or ecommerce store? No, not without every one of your website visitors needing a CAL (according to Microsoft*)

This is how confused the licensing system is from Microsoft.

*Now you must think I am mistaken, well have a look at Microsoft's official take on the subject here -> Licensing How To: When do I need a Client Access License (CAL)?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows DHCP to allocate IP addresses on your WIFi network to guests who are just browsing the web"

That's what separate routers are for. That and not letting guests near your servers (isolate network). Though if you are big enough to be using Windows DHCP for guests, you're probably big enough to count it against unused cals due to people not in office etc.

[Steve Davies 3]

But...

Fast and the like will say,

There will be times when everyone is in the office. Even if this is once a year you MUST have enough CALS to cover the connections. So Mr Customer, wanna pay now or shall we see you in court?

etc

etc

etc

MS Licensing is IMHO Not fit for purpose.

Here a CAL, There a CAL, everywhere you need a new CAL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But...

well that's what a Win Server External Connector license is for - so unlimited non-employees can access that server for exactly these scenarios (if the users are anonymous, IIS etc no cals required).

So that's a server CAL for each employee, and a WS external connector for each server to cover unlimited external use if necessary.

Is that genuinely too difficult?

The original post is correct - MS licensing may not be easy, but there's a lot worse and if you don't understand it, there's plenty of people who will help you out at no charge - go and talk to one of the thousands of MS resellers out there.

[andy 10]

CAL Requirement

"*Now you must think I am mistaken..."

You are mistaken, you can licence SQL Server by number of cores for web use/if you don't want to or can't calculate CAL requirements...

Windows Server/IIS for web use doesn't need CAL's (and that's right there in the doc you linked...)

[chivo243]

Count myself lucky

My employer has a MS Volume License. Should it change, I will have another duty it seems.

[Anonymous Coward]

0.8 of a customer?

" survey of 100 Microsoft customers" ... "an issue for 19.80 per cent"...

So there are fractional customers out there? or do some customers feel partially upset by MS sales tactics? Or just sometimes? - Maybe Monday-Thursday the sales guys are annopying but Friday's all is forgiven when the beers roll-out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 0.8 of a customer?

They said they surveyed 100. They didn't say how many replied to that particular question.

Interestingly, 19.8 is 20% of 99; exercise for the reader to deduce how some internal cockup mixing %age of those surveyed with number of those actually responding to that question gets them to that peculiar piece of silliness.

[@itamreview]

Re: 0.8 of a customer?

The research was developed from "over 100" respondents. Not exactly 100.

See http://www.clearlicensing.org/microsoft-white-paper/

[Paul Crawford]

I find no real problems with MS software licensing these days.

Oh yes, forgot to mention its mostly Linux here, with the odd XP VM for various occasionally used software that has no viable FOSS alternative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretical Scheme

One instance of software running on one machine = one license

Two instances of software running on one machine = better software required and in the meantime 2 licences

One instance of software running on a cluster of machines = one license.

.

Anything else and the software company are just trying to sc*w you over for more cash.

[Mikel]

When you want to be sure you are violating a license

Microsoft software is the way to go. There is no way to use it for anything that doesn't violate some term of the license somewhere.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Shifting use rights

"Singled out for criticism were 'constantly shifting' product use rights and licensing bundles that create duplications in entitlements."

For the love of god, this. Shifting from per-socket to per-core, charging based on RAM usage, charging differently based on whether an application is running in a VM or on bare metal, etc., plus charging an order of magnitude more for "Enterprise" functionality which contains one critical feature (such as having more than 2 nodes in an HA cluster), make Microsoft licensing truly deserving of the "M$" moniker. VMware tried to go down the same route with the RAM tax, but they backed off when customers yelped; Microsoft just sends their licensing enforcement bully boys around for their pound of flesh.

[Ilsa Loving]

No kidding

I wanted to set up and RDS server that had a copy of Project on it, because once in a blue moon someone in the company might need it for a couple days in order to make a change, or some such.

I ended up falling into a rabbit hole where I needed to have server cals for every user in the company, Project licenses for every user in the company, yadda yadda.

The most (relatively) realistic option I have apparently, is to buy several Office 365 licenses, and then play licensing musical chairs, manually shifting the license from one person to another when they need it.

And then people wonder why I go out of my way to avoid Microsoft products for everything, using them only when there is flat out no other choice.

[dan1980]

Re: No kidding

Yeah, it's a bit ridiculous that way.

That's one's easy to understand: any user that connects to the server - however infrequently - needs an RDS CAL and an MS Project License.

But it's not really very 'flexible' and is meant purely to wring as much licensing revenue as possible.

What would be sensible would be a concurrent user license for this situation. Perhaps that license would cost more, in the same way that a full 'retail' license of Office or Windows costs more than an OEM version, which is bound to a PC.

That would be reasonable because if you buy a full retail copy of MS Office off the shelf, you can install it on one PC and then uninstall and re-install on another PC when a different person needs it and you can do that as often as you like - at least so far as the license is concerned.

So why shouldn't a similar ability extend to an application hosted on an RDS server and for the RDS CALs themselves?

No one in their rights mind will pay for a hundred RDS CALs and a hundred application licenses just because any one of a hundred staff may need to access an application very occasionally.