Software Asset Management Professionals

Microsoft Roaming Rights will be changed

Posted on February 2, 2016August 15, 2024 by Ben Tight

Understanding Changes to Microsoft Roaming Rights: Insights from February’s Product Terms Document

February’s Microsoft Product Terms Document brings significant changes to how Microsoft Roaming Rights will be handled for Windows Enterprise and VDA.

From the February Product Terms:

4.14 Roaming Rights Retirement for Windows Enterprise and Windows VDA

Customers with active SA for Windows Enterprise or Windows VDA retain Roaming Rights through the later of:

the end of their existing Enrollment or Agreement term, or
January 31, 2017

Current Licensing Requirements for Windows VDA Roaming Use Rights As per Microsoft licensing Brief:

Windows VDA Rights allow for a licensed device or user to access virtual Windows desktops either remotely and/or locally, depending on how the device or user is licensed. You can license devices or users for Windows VDA rights in the following ways:

– License devices with Windows Software Assurance or Windows VDA subscription on a per device basis.

– License users with Windows Software Assurance or Windows VDA subscription on a per user basis.

Roaming Use Definition

The single primary user of the device licensed with active Windows Software Assurance or Windows VDA subscription (work device) can do the following:

At any one time, remotely access one or more of the permitted instances running on your servers (for example, in your data center) from a third-party device.

At any one time, run one instance of the software in a virtual OSE on a qualifying third-party device.

When the primary user is on your or your affiliates’ company premises, Roaming Use Rights are not applicable.

These Windows VDA Rights and the corresponding Roaming Use Rights are non-perpetual and are only active as long as the underlying Software Assurance for Windows, Windows VDA subscription, and/or Windows CSL is active.

Potential Licensing Impact: A Per-User VDA subscription will also be required for Roaming Use rights.

If you have questions or concerns about the impact of this change we encourage you to contact one of our unbiased licensing experts for a free initial consultation.

Microsoft Changes Minimum Enterprise Agreement Qualified User/Device Count

Posted on January 22, 2016June 25, 2024 by Ben Tight

Change is one constant in the Microsoft licensing world. Recently Microsoft has announced a rather significant change to their Enterprise Agreement (EA) program. Effective July 1, 2016 the minimum commitment to the Enterprise Agreement (EA) program will increase from 250 qualified users/devices to 500 qualified users/devices.

What does this mean for Clients?

Existing EA customers who do not meet the new minimum commitments can obviously continue within their current agreements until expiration. At that point, it appears existing EA customers will have the option to extend their existing agreements by 36 months. After the extension expires they will have to transition to either the Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA) or the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) agreements if they do not meet the minimum 500 users/device count.

Why is Microsoft Making this Change and What Should I expect?

For many years the EA program was the core licensing vehicle that Microsoft drove any and all clients (who met the qualifications) towards. Its clear now that Microsoft is incredibly focussed on their cloud offerings and the MPSA/CSP programs are better positioned to drive that agenda. Expect Microsoft and their partners to begin aggressively attempting to move clients onto the MPSA/CSP programs rather than extending their EAs.

What steps should I take?

Contact MetrixData360 to have a free initial consultation to evaluate your Microsoft licensing options with one of our licensing experts. We are not a Microsoft partner and offer unbiased licensing guidance to our clients. Our focus is to reduce your Microsoft costs and help you negotiate the best possible Microsoft contract.

MetrixData360 Optimizes Our Own Office 365 Subscriptions

Posted on December 22, 2015June 25, 2024 by Ben Tight

Want to save 37% off your Office 365 deployments and your annual subscription costs? Read up below to see how we did just this for our tiny Office 365 E3 deployment here at MetrixData360.

Many of you may not know this, but we use Office 365 to run our business. It wasn’t our first choice (in fact we used to run on Google), but we ended up migrating to it for one very simple reason:

Outlook Calendars and Google just don’t work well. We would accept meetings on our iPhones and with the one-way sync between Google and calendaring (if you accept in Google it will populate to your phone but not the other way around) we were missing important meetings.

When we decided to move to Office 365 we purchased E3 subscriptions for our 12 users. It was just the simplest thing for us to do. As we were doing budgeting for 2016, we were looking at the costs of all of our subscriptions (Office 365, DropBox, WebEx, etc.) and realized the annual fees on all of these were getting out of hand so we decided to follow our own advice and optimized our licensing.

For various reasons we will continue to use Dropbox and WebEx (even though we have the ability to use OneDrive and Skype for Business). Simplicity and functionality rules for us here at MetrixData360.

OneDrive does not work well with Mac (and a few of us use those). The only way to get access is via the web client which is a very cumbersome way to access file storage technologies. Even though they have a OneDrive for business client for Mac (Beta), after many hours of trying we never were able to get it to work correctly. Microsoft really has a lot of work to do on this one.

Similarly, Skype for Business is not as good as WebEx for meetings. We use the Instant Message features of Skype but not the online meetings (we were finding it was hard to manage, calls dropping, poor call quality when doing VOIP, etc). One of our biggest reasons for continuing on WebEx however was for marketing. WebEx is so much more feature rich for recording and doing webinars, which are very important to our business.

When we looked at our usage we found that half of our users really only needed Exchange Online Plan 1. We swapped them out immediately and dropped our number of E3 subscriptions. The net was a 37% reduction in our annual costs of Office 365. I hesitate to think of the impact to the bottom line of our largest clients (100’’s of thousands if not millions of dollars are being wasted) that are overpaying Microsoft.

We have some exciting news that we will be sharing shortly. We are working with our partners over at Block 64 on a new service offering that we will be launching in the first quarter of 2016 to help companies who use Office 365 get the same results we did. We plan on automating the review and showing you how to optimize those Office 365 subscriptions across your organization to save your precious budget dollars! Stay tuned!

MetrixData360 specializes in helping organizations who are facing a Microsoft audit with assistance through every stage of the audit process. Our goal is to reduce any compliance gaps you may have and ensure that you are only paying for the software and services you really need. Contact us today to book a free consultation to see if we can help you!

Not Understanding The Complexity of Licensing Microsoft SQL Can Cost You

Posted on December 18, 2015October 28, 2024 by Ben Tight

Avoiding Costly Mistakes: Mastering the Complexity of Microsoft SQL Licensing

What You Google When You’re Being Audited by Microsoft

Posted on December 1, 2015June 25, 2024 by Ben Tight

Facing a Microsoft Audit? Here’s What You Might Be Searching for on Google!

Have you received an audit letter from Microsoft? Here’s a glimpse of what you may search for on Google!

Metrixdata360.com

Top Learnings from Gartner IT Financial and Procurement Summit 2015

Posted on November 30, 2015August 15, 2024 by Ben Tight

MetrixData360 recently had the privilege of attending the Gartner IT Financial and Procurement Summit in Grapevine Texas. These events bring together one of the largest groups of IT professionals who are involved in software license procurement in North America. The level of knowledgeable people in the field of IT Procurement who attend is definitely unparalleled. MetrixData360 had the opportunity to speak with many of the participants as well as speak in the Vendor Showcase. Over the course of the Gartner Summit, I kept hearing the same messages again and again from organizations and I thought it would be valuable to share some of these overriding observations.

Software audits are increasing in frequency, aggression and pretty much any metric you want to use to measure them. Almost every single attendee we spoke to had either been audited by a software vendor recently, was in the midst of an audit or expected to be audited in the very near future. This is confirmed by what we are seeing in our own business as MetrixData360’s Assert Audit Assistance service has been our fastest growing offering by far. In fact, Audit Assistance now makes up around 50% of our consulting engagements. Software vendors have very aggressive sales quotas and in our opinion the lazy way to close that gap is to launch audits.

There are a large number of software asset management tools available to help organizations get a better understanding of their software assets and manage potential compliance risks. These tools range from standalone hardware appliances, agent and/or agentless solutions to cloud based software asset/contract management solutions. These tools generally provide great value in terms of assessing software deployments, assignment of license entitlements and software title normalization. While these important components are critical in establishing a SAM baseline, they remain clearly insufficient in terms of license optimization and cost reduction. One of the key challenges most organizations are facing is that no single solution is currently capable of bridging the gap between “raw SAM outputs” and an “optimized software-licensing model”. By this I mean these raw outputs need to be humanized and a certain level of licensing logic must be applied. Therefore, organizations are constantly faced with incomplete results and are required to purchase expensive add-on tools, provide additional training to IT procurement staff. In many cases, organizations will still need to engage 3^rd party expertise to provide validation and supplement existing findings in order to deliver a concise dataset that is reflective of an organization’s optimized software license footprint. SAM solutions in market are simply offering components of the SAM process but unfortunately, none offers a complete end-to-end solution. Without any expert licensing knowledge being injected into the process, the outputs from most tools are definitely not optimized which usually plays into software vendors advantage. I state this as MetrixData360 works with raw outputs from any tool our clients use and we have yet to see data outputs which can stand alone without significant human intervention in the face of an audit.

It is also evident that organizations are more concerned with proper software asset management than ever before. Many people I spoke to had recently taken major steps in this regard or were in the process of kicking off projects. Everyone was concerned about software licensing compliance and were taking steps to become more and more sophisticated about how they managed their assets. It certainly appears that organizations are taking software compliance more seriously and are making significant SAM investments.

Not surprisingly, people were frustrated. They were frustrated with audit crazed software vendors. They were frustrated with the limitations of existing tools and, they were frustrated with constantly changing software licensing rules. I was left with the distinct impression that these people were doing their level best to do the right thing. By this I mean they advocated software licensing compliance and they would be among the first to rail against software piracy. Yet over and over again they were the ones facing a software audit. Many of these people felt victimized by the various revenue generating tactics employed by software vendors.

Compared to last year’s Gartner Summit organizations are actively seeking out third party experts to augment their knowledge and comprehension regarding software asset management and related processes. Quite simply the expertise and tools required to successfully mitigate a software audit is beyond most organization’s capabilities. On several occasions, I spoke to people who said things like, “I wish I had known about MetrixData360 during my last software audit”

Links to further resources:

Click to Learn More About MetrixData360 Assert Audit Assistance Services

What’s the Difference Between a SAM Engagement and an Audit

What’s the Difference When Purchasing Office Through Microsoft Office 365 vs Traditional Licensing Models?

Posted on November 16, 2015June 25, 2024 by Ben Tight

A lot of people think that when they are purchasing Microsoft Office Pro through Office 365 they’re buying it and accessing it in the Cloud.

That’s not necessarily the case.

Yes, you can get access to the Office web apps that are in the Cloud, but there’s a fundamental difference in Office. It is the same product, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but the Office 365 edition is what they call Click-to-Run versus your traditional EA which is just Office Pro Plus.

Click-to-Run vs On-Prem

The difference between Click-to-Run and on-premise is that in Click-to-Run it has to be current. In other words, where most organizations today are not running Office 2016. Most organizations that we see aren’t even running Office 2013. They’re running Office 2010.

With Click-to-Run you have to be current. I believe it’s one year they give you where you can run the older version. If I’m on Click-to-Run 2013 or 2016 in a year it’s only 2016. So, if you think about the challenges organizations have upgrading their desktops around application testing and things like that, they’re going to have to run those more frequently and Microsoft’s just automatically pushing down patches and updates and making changes to it that they have no control over anymore or limited controls.

That’s one thing organizations need to step back and say, “Okay, Click-to-Run may have some complications that don’t make sense for me to use.”

Enterprise Agreements vs Click-to-Run

The other thing is if they buy Office through a traditional EA versus Click-to-Run, it’s user-based versus device-based. That may have some advantages for some customers and it may have some disadvantages for some customers.

Office, although you can now install it on iPads and smartphones and things like that using an Office 365 subscription, in the Enterprise environment we’re not seeing a lot of use of Office on those types of platforms.

It’s really still a traditional desktop or laptop where end-users consume Office. There’s been some playing with it, but we’re not seeing broad adoption in the Enterprise based environment for that.

What’s the difference in an organization that’s a call center where they have three shifts that run through the call center and you have 1,000 devices, or desktops, and 3,000 users?

In a device-based licensing model I pay for 1,000 and for a user-based model I pay for 3,000. There’s something upside down on that equation. You really want to take a look at the environment and figure out does user-based licensing make more sense for you or does device-based licensing for Office make more sense?

Do I want to be forced to go to Run-to-Click where Microsoft is going to push stock or that it has to have an active Office 365 subscription in order to use? Or do I want to stay with the traditional on-premise copy Office and use that one?

If I wanted to stay with the device-based Office but wanted to go to Office 365, add-ons are the perfect way to do that. If we go back to the call center, 3,000 Office 365 USLs, so to speak, 1,000 Office licenses, 3,000 add-ons. Add-ons are a lot cheaper than USLs.

Add-on vs. User Subscription License

Posted on November 16, 2015June 25, 2024 by Ben Tight

Office 365 Addon Or Subscription? What’s the Difference?

When most people hear Office 365, they think of what you call user subscription license or USL.

Everybody thinks it’s a subscription so they don’t own a perpetual license anymore. It’s just a monthly subscription that you pay for annually, upfront typically, but it’s a monthly subscription.

Moving from an Enterprise Agreement

If you’re moving from your EA that’s renewing, where you own a license and have active software assurance, you would move to these USLs or these subscriptions, and give up your perpetual licenses or the rights to them in the future.

In that case, the EA renews, or if it renewed today they would be entitled to say Office 2016, Exchange 2013 and SharePoint 2013. They would move to the subscription licenses and they wouldn’t own anything.

So three years from now, and they didn’t go to the Cloud or decide they want to come back on-premise, they don’t own licenses for what’s current. They only own the licenses for what was frozen at their renewal. So the user subscription license is a pure subscription. It’s also user-based. So, with Office, for instance, you would count Office based on devices, the number of laptops, desktops on which it’s deployed. Whereas, USLs are all to the users.

Add-ons for CALs

The add-on is basically a concept where I have active software assurance on my CALs, whether that be the Core CAL or the ECAL, and Office and I add an Office 365 subscription on top of that. It may seem like it’s a simple difference, but there’s a number of actual subtle differences that may make a lot of sense for organizations.

For instance, If I renew and then I renew my software assurance on Office and my CALs and then do the Office 365 add-ons, I can migrate my users to the Cloud, nothing changes there, I still have access to Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype in the Cloud; but, I’m keeping my perpetual licenses. Three years go by at the end of that contract I didn’t move to the Cloud or I decided it’s not working and I want to come back on-premise. Guess what? I own all my licenses. I own the most current versions and I could walk away at that point in time. Whereas under the USL I own nothing so I’d have to re-buy licenses if I wanted to come back on-premise.

Getting the Most From Your Office 365 Licensing

So, it’s a way to hedge your bets if Office 365 doesn’t deliver on the promise or something changes, it’s a way to get out of it. The other thing is it could be a way to hedge your bet three years down the road. If I had a USL and Microsoft gives me a great deal what happens if three years from now I don’t have any licenses, I’m on these subscriptions, Microsoft says I’m not giving you any discount anymore and we’ve upped the price 10%? Now all of a sudden, I’m sitting in a position where my price has gone up 30% or 40% and I have no leverage. So, it’s a way to continue to maintain leverage as well.

Related: Save Money on Microsoft 365

Microsoft Office 365 How Do You Know What You Really Need?

Posted on October 15, 2015June 26, 2024 by Ben Tight

Office 365 licensing is surrounded by a great deal of confusion. What is Office 365? What plan do I require? Do I require the full suite? Should I purchase User Subscription Licenses or Add-0ns? It is no secret that Microsoft is aggressively promoting and selling the service. The key question to ask is what is Office 365? The most common answers are related to Office 365 E3. E3 contains Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, SkypeforBusiness Online and Office Professional Plus. Most people are unaware that you can purchase a single service such as Exchange Online (YES, even in your EA) instead of the bundle.

My experience is that most people relate a desire to move to Exchange Online to purchasing Office 365 E3. When asked why they are considering Office 365 the answers range from “we want to reduce our email storage costs” or “we plan to move our mailboxes into the cloud”. Other Online Services seem to garner less interest (although there seems to be a bit more interest in SharePoint Online lately).

What is shocking is how many organizations interpret a desire to move email to the cloud as a need to negotiate an Office 365 E3 deal with Microsoft. Most simply do not realize that alternatives exist (such as purchasing only Exchange Online). It could cost millions more if these options are not considered.

If considering a move to the cloud ask the following questions (these are just a few examples):

What Services am I really looking to purchase? Is it just Exchange Online?
How quickly will a migration occur? How will users be moved?
Are all users the same? Do they all require E3? Do they all require features of Exchange Online Plan 2?
What contractual rights exist? What risks or benefits does purchasing one have over the other?
Do User Subscription Licenses (USL) or Add-Ons make sense?
Have I evaluated the benefits and risks of USLs to Add-Ons?

What about Office? How does this factor into the decision making criteria?

The short answer is it shouldn’t. This surprises many people. Office is a prominent part of the E3 product and does deserve consideration. An evaluation of purchasing Office 365 Office Professional Plus versus perpetual licenses for Office Professional Plus should be conducted. Consideration for comparing “Run to Click” to on premise Office, understanding the value/risk of Microsoft pushing updates, the value (if any – it is surprising how often there isn’t any) in user based Office licensing, VDI or BYOD environments and many others.

If negotiating an Office 365 purchase, review the options and consider proposals for:

Exchange Online instead of E3
Renewing SA and purchasing add-ons instead of USLs
Purchasing licenses through an Office 365 transition versus upfront commitment
Buying as you go versus all upfront

It is surprising what can be learned by asking these questions, not to mention the cost savings you may see.

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