Tag Archives: Licensing Guides

Microsoft Products and Services Agreement Licensing Manual

New Microsoft Products and Services Agreement Licensing Manual; probably the best, no-frills overview of the new MPSA, so worth a read. If you know your Select Plus licensing, start with that in mind as you read about Purchasing Accounts (affiliates), Price Levels (as Select Plus), Points (all Online Services at 1 point across Applications or Servers pool), and Price Level Adjustments (as Select Plus). Significant changes include the all-powerful Microsoft Volume Licensing Center that allows the usual licence management but adds ordering and allocation of Online Services too.

bit.ly/1a2TH1r

More New Volume Licensing Briefs for November 2013

Microsoft Software Dependency Guide

  • Updated to reflect current product versions as of November 2013
  • Previous brief: September 2012
  • http://bit.ly/1gzegI9

Base and Additive Client Access Licenses (CALs): An Explanation

  • Updated to reflect the current products as of November 2013
  • Previous brief: April 2013
  • http://bit.ly/1bQsSCV

Licensing the Core Client Access License (CAL) Suite and Enterprise CAL Suite

  • Updated to reflect the current products as of November 2013
  • Previous brief: April 2013
  • http://bit.ly/J3P8NJ

Licensing Windows Server 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Services

  • Updated to reflect Windows Server 2012 R2 licensing
  • Previous brief: September 2012
  • http://bit.ly/1cBdgAl

Licensing Microsoft Office Software in Volume Licensing

  • Updated to reflect the latest release of Microsoft Office
  • Previous brief: June 2011
  • http://bit.ly/14USCK6

Licensing Microsoft Server Products for Use in Virtual Environments

  • Updated to reflect Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft System Center 2012 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2013
  • Previous brief: January 2013
  • http://bit.ly/J3STD0

Licensing the Windows Desktop Operating System for use with Virtual Machines

Licensing Windows Server 2012 R2 for use with Virtualization Technologies

Additions to Visual Studio 2013 Licensing

I can remember writing the MLSS exam for Visual Studio a few years ago and being given the feedback that I’d made it just a tad too hard (slackers :-)) You’ll all look back fondly on those simple licensing days when you hear about the additions to Visual Studio 2013 licensing…

There are two new things to get your head around: Release Management and Visual Studio Online. I’ll give you the overview here and then some links if you have the urge for more information. Note that the Visual Studio 2013 Licensing Whitepaper has been updated for the third time this year and does include these changes. Download it here: http://bit.ly/1hkf7gn.

Visual Studio 2013 Release Management

The Release Management functionality is all about enabling additional capabilities in Team Foundation Server 2013 to automate complex application deployments to a variety of target environments… OK, OK, let’s do it in English! – if you’re in charge of getting a new release of your application to lots of different places, this functionality makes it significantly easier.

Now, let’s imagine you are indeed that person in charge of application deployment so that we can consider what needs to be installed for this magic to work and how you’d license it. First of all, from the server side, something called Release Management Server for Team Foundation Server 2013 needs to be installed, and there are no additional licensing requirements on top of TFS for that. You personally are then going to use the Release Management Client for Visual Studio 2013 to kick off the deployment process, and rights to that are included in most MSDN subscriptions. Then, any machine to which your application is going to be deployed needs to have Microsoft Deployment Agent 2013 installed and to be covered by a BRAND NEW licence. (Just checking you’re still awake!) This is the Visual Studio Deployment licence and it’s available in two flavours –Standard and Datacenter – which follow the Processor-based licensing model for Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.

For homework, I’d recommend delving into a bit more detail on the new Visual Studio Deployment offerings at the following link where you’ll find pricing information and confirmation of the differences between Standard and Datacenter editions:

http://www.visualstudio.com/en-gb/products/how-to-buy-release-management-vs

And so to…

Visual Studio Online

If you’ve heard of Team Foundation Service, Visual Studio Online is the evolution of that. If not, we’ll start at the beginning anyway since it is, of course, a very good place to start.

So, in the beginning Visual Studio was a development environment on the desktop, then it expanded to include team development capabilities with Team Foundation Server, and now it’s been extended to the cloud with a collection of developer services hosted, of course, in Azure and called Visual Studio Online. If you want more information on some of the services that developers can now enjoy, I’d recommend the link below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2013/11/13/visual-studio-2013-launch-announcing-visual-studio-online.aspx

But let’s investigate here how it’s licensed. That development organisation you were working for in the section above has decided that it’s going to embrace the cloud and so it signs up for a free Visual Studio Online account. You and your colleagues with your eligible MSDN subscriptions don’t need to purchase anything to link to this Visual Studio Online account and it comes with a certain amount of free shared monthly resources for build and load testing. If you want other users to join the account then you purchase them a Visual Studio Online plan (either Basic, Professional or Advanced) – you get five free Basic users with the account – and if you need more shared resources, perhaps virtual user minutes of cloud load testing (my personal favourite), then you buy that through a new or existing Windows Azure subscription.

For your final bit of homework, I’d recommend the following link to get some more detail on the different plans and for some useful FAQs:

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/visual-studio-online

Now, (rolls up sleeves) let me just go and update that MLSS exam…

BizTalk Server 2013 Licensing Datasheet

BizTalk Server 2013 Licensing Datasheet and FAQs from Microsoft. Useful sections include an overview of Core licensing for BizTalk, licensing BizTalk in virtualised environments, and how customers should move from Processor licences to Core licences. If you know your SQL Server 2012 licensing, then this is almost identical: http://bit.ly/1bLT7sr

Updated Lync 2013 Licensing Guide – November 2013

This newly released Lync 2013 Licensing Guide has some interesting amendments in four main areas with, as usual, some licensing elements disappearing completely and other freshly-imagined notions taking their place. Get the guide here: http://aka.ms/tnydo0

Out: Connectivity to Public Instant Messaging Users

  • Firstly, there’s an update on the capability to connect with certain public IM service providers. Windows Live Messenger disappears completely (end of an era!) and it’s confirmed that the agreements in place with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Yahoo! Messenger will end on 30 June, 2014

In: Lync Room Systems

  • If you’ve not heard of these, then this Lync Team Blog article is a good place to start (http://bit.ly/1cYdmpQ). Essentially, a Lync Room System is an “integrated meeting room solution” that consists of high definition touch displays and video cameras, wideband audio and a meeting console – that’s everything you need for your successful Lync meeting of course! If you feel the need for a picture of said system then you’ll find one on the Lync Team Blog. It is, in fact, a full Lync client and, as such, it’s a device that needs to be licensed, and you’ll need to allocate a Standard and Enterprise CAL to it if you’re licensing by device

Out: Lync Online Plan 3

  • Lync Online Plan 3 (for Microsoft-hosted Enterprise Voice) disappears from the guide. Customers with an Office 365 E4 plan continue to get a subscription to the Lync Server Plus CAL which means they can use an on-premise Lync server to deploy Enterprise Voice or, alternatively, the recommendation is to work with a partner for a hosted solution. Full details on page 17

In: New Licensing Lync Devices section

  • There’s a new section on licensing devices that connect to a Lync server. There’s good news that your USB headset won’t need to be licensed (!) and more useful confirmation that “Optimized for Lync IP Phones” will need Standard and Plus CALs (or their users will, of course). But for me, the most interesting note was that Lync phones don’t need Windows CALs as they authenticate against Lync Server, not Active Directory, and don’t access any Windows Server features

Visual Studio 2013 and MSDN Licensing Guide

Visual Studio 2013 and MSDN Licensing Guide from Microsoft. There are minimal changes to the licensing with the most notable amendments being the server features that require more than a CAL – there’s a list of these new features and changes from Visual Studio 2012 on page 26.

Download the guide here: http://bit.ly/1hkf7gn

New Volume Licensing Briefs for October and November 2013

October 2013

Licensing Windows Embedded 8

Downgrade Rights for Microsoft Volume Licensing, OEM, and FPP Licences

  • Updated for Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Office 2013 products
  • Previous brief: September 2012
  •  http://bit.ly/17o1yEf

Microsoft Licensing for the Consumerization of IT

Microsoft Licensing for the Consumerization of IT – Academic Licensing Scenarios

November 2013

Licensing Windows Intune

  • Updated for the December 2012 update of Windows Intune and the November 2013 update of Windows 8.1
  • Previous brief: December 2012
  •  http://bit.ly/17mQhUo

Licensing Office 365 ProPlus Subscription Service in Volume Licensing

Licensing Windows and Microsoft Office for use on a Mac

What are “Qualified Devices”?

  • Updated to reflect the definitions of “Qualified Device” and “Management for Qualified Devices” as revised in October 2012 for the Enterprise Agreement, and Open Value and Open Value Subscription agreements
  • http://bit.ly/1dA2bmC

Reimaging Licensed Microsoft Software using Volume Licensing Media

  • Updated for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Previous brief: January 2013
  •  http://bit.ly/1a8GtyG

Step-up Licenses

  • Updated to reflect the available step-up licences as of November 2013
  • Previous brief: December 2012
  •  http://bit.ly/1imCMuf

Multi-Lingual User Interface (MUI) Language Packs for Windows

Windows 8.1 Licensing Guide

New Windows 8.1 Licensing Guide from Microsoft (http://bit.ly/19WbhCI). Licensing largely the same, as you’d expect, but three key clarifications:

  • Customers covered with SA retain perpetual use rights for Windows 8.1 Enterprise (even after SA has expired and regardless of whether they have installed the Enterprise edition – a change from the original October 2012 Windows 8 Licensing Guide – page 9)
  • VL customers with Windows 8 Pro without SA can upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro, but active SA is needed to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Enterprise (page 5)
  • Confirmation that primary users of a device covered with MDOP and CSL are also covered for MDOP on their companion devices (page 13).

Running MSDN Software on Third Party Shared Servers

Most MSDN software can now (from 1 June 2013) be run on authorised third party shared servers, including Windows Azure. Both the Product Use Rights (page 56) and the Visual Studio/MSDN Licensing Guide (page 13) have been updated. Get to all of the Microsoft Licensing Guides in one place at: http://bit.ly/182fp9f