Office 365 ProPlus: Shared Computer Activation

Native RDS support for Office 365 ProPlus has arrived and that means a slight change to the licensing.

Previously, Office 365 ProPlus couldn’t be deployed to users’ devices using RDS and there was a note in the Product List which allowed customers to use Office Professional Plus 2013 software to enable this scenario, which counted as 1 of the 5 allowed installations.

From 1 September 2014 there’s something called Shared Computer Activation – now, Office 365 ProPlus CAN be installed in an RDS environment, and this no longer counts against the 5 installations.

See page 51 of the September 2014 Product List, this Microsoft blog: http://bit.ly/ZfxoXr and TechNet article: http://bit.ly/1s9EOX4

Microsoft MPSA FAQ Page

The MPSA FAQ page has been updated to include the availability of Software Assurance from 1 September 2014. It’s quite a useful page if you’re getting up to speed with this new agreement and you can find it here: http://bit.ly/1pHzpH6.

SQL 2014: Determining Core Licences at SA Renewal: April 2014

If you need to know how SQL Processor licences are renewed into Core licences at SA renewal, then this is the guide for you.

Snazzily entitled “Determining SQL Server 2014 Core Licensing Requirements at SA Renewal” it’s a comprehensive guide to the whole process including a section on using the MAP Toolkit. Get it here: http://bit.ly/1zG13E8.

SA is now available in the MPSA

Today – 1 September 2014 – Software Assurance is available in Microsoft’s new MPSA agreement.

If you want to get up to speed with the MPSA then invest a mere seven and a half minutes in our mini training video: http://bit.ly/Vx8oZa.

SQL 2014 Virtualisation Licensing Guide: June 2014

This SQL 2014 Virtualisation Licensing Guide is a good read: it’s got sections on licensing individual VMs, Licence Mobility, and unlimited virtualisation, as well as clarification of the rules around hyper-threading, and a great table in the appendix which shows the virtualisation licensing rules for past versions of SQL Server.

Get the guide here and enjoy: http://bit.ly/1tcNCNr.

SQL 2014 Licensing Guide: April 2014

A jolly useful 31 pages of SQL Licensing Loveliness. This is a great guide which has been updated for SQL 2014 and includes useful sections on licensing Parallel Data Warehouse, the anomalies of SQL Enterprise Server/CAL, as well as being updated for the cloud.

There are all the other sections you would expect and you can find the guide here: http://bit.ly/VNVI0L

July 2014 update to the Perpetual License Transfer Form

The Perpetual License Transfer form is updated for July 2014. The previous verson was October 2013 and there aren’t massive changes in this version. Here are the additions:

page 2 – the Customer must provide the Transferee with sufficient documentation to understand the licensing rights;

page 3 – Customers may not transfer Volume Licence Keys;

page 3 – as well as stopping using the software the Customer must also uninstall it;

page 5 – a Part Number column is added to the transfer table.

You can download the latest version of the form here: http://bit.ly/1h2CptX.

Video: Where does the MPSA fit in?

Introducing our new “Coffee Break” series – some short videos on Microsoft licensing.

Our first one is entitled “Where does the MPSA fit in?” and you can access it here: http://bit.ly/Vx8oZa

Program Licensing Guides

We’ve extended our collection of Microsoft Licensing Guides to include those for Program Licensing too.

Check them out here: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides