Microsoft Licensing

This report summarizes Office suite licensing for organizations buying through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs. The report is designed to help organizations understand the licensing rules and the most important factors in licensing decisions. The appendix to the report summarizes subscription-based licensing for the Office Professional Plus suite offered via Microsoft's Office 365 offerings.

INTRODUCTION

Microsoft Office presents some of the most important licensing and purchasing decisions for organizations. Office is a line of PC application suites aimed at business users. Office makes up a major part of the software license budget in many organizations, so organizations have to weigh their purchase options carefully to minimize license costs while respecting budgeting and financing constraints. Office also presents some of the most difficult problems for license compliance, particularly when deployed to large numbers of users, so organizations must carefully weigh compliance requirements against license costs.

The Office Challenge

With Office 2010, the latest version, Office suites include combinations of the following applications:

• Outlook (e-mail, calendar, and contacts)
• Word (document creation)
• Excel (spreadsheet)
• PowerPoint (slide presentation)
• OneNote (note-taking and collaboration)
• Publisher (small-business document publishing)
• Business Contact Manager (an add-in for storing and managing customer data in Outlook)
• Access (database management)
• Communicator or Lync (communications including presence, instant messaging, PowerPoint sharing, voice, and video)
• InfoPath (forms design and forms-based entry of XML data)
• SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove, peer-to-peer collaboration and offline SharePoint access)

Many other Microsoft products formerly carried the Office brand, but they are not included in Office suites.

Office suites normally follow Microsoft's Desktop Applications licensing model. The general principle of the model is easy to state: Any device on which a user employs an Office suite requires a license for the suite. However, complying with this principle becomes tricky when an organization is deploying the Office software to large numbers of computers, and even more so when employees use Office from devices such as tablets that do not have Office installed. An organization can simplify compliance upfront by choosing the right types of Office licenses and licensing programs.

However, compliance is not the only consideration. Organizations can choose between two Office suites—Office Standard and Office Professional Plus—that differ significantly in costs and capabilities. Office licenses can be purchased in several programs that vary in the licenses, discounts, and financing they offer and in the minimum commitments they require. Making the right choice requires understanding what the organization needs from Office, finding purchase programs that deliver the licenses for those needs, and striking the right balance between financial considerations and compliance risk.

What's Ahead

This report focuses on Office suite licensing in Microsoft Volume Licensing programs. The report will help organizations understand licensing rules and programs for Office suites and how to approach the most important Office licensing and purchase decisions.

Chapters Included in this Report:

• Compliance and Enterprise Deployment
Organizations need to understand the basic licensing rules for the Office suite to determine how many licenses to purchase and what records to keep. These tasks are simple when licensing a small number of desktop PCs, but they quickly become challenging when dealing with large numbers of diverse devices in a global organization. The Office suites sold in volume licensing deliver important rights and technical capabilities that can help organizations cope and that are missing from suites bought in other channels.


• Choosing an Office 2010 Suite
Two Office suites, Office Standard and Office Professional Plus, are available in volume licensing. Organizations need to evaluate whether some or all of their users can be served by the less-expensive Office Standard or whether they need Office Professional Plus, which offers additional PC applications and hooks to server products such as SharePoint. The additional capabilities in Office Professional Plus can help enforce policies on distributing and retaining documents, enable departmental report and application development, and promote adoption of SharePoint.


• Using Software Assurance with Office
Software Assurance (SA) is a subscription add-on to licenses that offers version-upgrade rights and other benefits. It is required for license purchases in some volume licensing programs and is an option for others. For Office, SA can deliver savings on upgrades and simplify budgeting and financing, and it delivers a package of rights and discounts that will aid Office deployment and management in large, global organizations. However, organizations must carefully weigh these benefits against SA's costs and ensure that they have procedures in place to take advantage of the benefits.


• Choosing Volume Licensing Programs for Office
Organizations need to choose a specific program for any Office purchase. A key decision is whether or not to purchase Office in an Enterprise Agreement (EA), which offers the most favorable discounts and simplest compliance but entails a larger commitment and offers less flexibility than alternatives such as Select Plus. Large organizations with broad commitments to Microsoft technology will favor the EA, but organizations with smaller Microsoft investments will have to consider alternatives more carefully.


• Resources
This chapter provides links for further information in Directions on Microsoft publications and Microsoft's site.


• Appendix: Office Professional Plus Subscription Offered with Office 365
Organizations can license the Office suite as a per-user subscription along with Office 365 Microsoft-hosted services such as Exchange Online. This option will appeal to small, cash-strapped organizations, but larger organizations will have to weigh the payoffs against potential problems with large-scale deployment and management of the suite.

Charts & Illustrations included in this Report:

• Chart: Downsides to OEM and Retail Office Suite Purchases
• Sidebar: Office for Mac
• Illustration: Office Standard and Office Professional Plus
• Chart: Office License Prices
• Illustration: Office Upgrade Paths with SA
• Chart: Comparing Office Professional Plus License Types

This 24-page Report Contains [14,226 words].

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