The diagram below shows a typical client server network: there’s a server in the center where the server products are installed, and then there are users who use a variety of devices to access the services of the server. Both…
Windows Server 2022 is Microsoft’s server operating system and there are two editions used by most commercial customers: Standard and Datacenter editions. The main part of this section focuses on the licensing of these editions, and then the licensing of…
The on-premises servers are typically licensed by assigning licenses to the server and then licensing users or devices to access the services of the server. Many of the User Subscription Licenses for Online Services products such as Office 365 E3…
The majority of the on-premises products are licensed with device licenses. In the case of the server products this means that licenses are assigned to a server device which must be dedicated to a customer’s use. As an alternative to…
An organization licensing a server infrastructure will license its servers and its users who are known as internal users. They then potentially need to license their external users. An external user is someone who isn’t an employee of the organization…
Customers with Software Assurance on their licenses for many of the products are eligible to purchase Step-up licenses. A Step-up license allows a customer to move from a lower edition of a product to a higher edition by just paying…
Software Assurance is an additional purchase that can be made when a license is purchased. A license gives a certain set of rights and Software Assurance typically gives an additional set of rights and benefits. For instance, a Windows 11…
If you exercise downgrade rights, then you need to understand which product use rights govern your deployment of the product. In other words, if you’ve purchased SQL Server 2022 licenses, but chosen to deploy SQL Server 2019, which licensing rules…
New licenses are always sold for the latest version of a product. However, sometimes customers want to deploy further instances of an older version and so need to acquire additional licenses for that deployment. Most products give downgrade rights allowing…
A version is a particular release of a piece of software and it often corresponds to a year – Windows Server 2025, for example. An edition is a way of differentiating between different sets of functionality that are included in…