Licensing Macs for Windows Under an EA

Organizations with Enterprise Agreements (EAs) covering Windows should be aware of a quirk with respect to the treatment of Macs and should compensate accordingly.

As with PCs, Macs used as a general purpose computing device on behalf of an organization would generally be considered a “qualifying device” under an EA. A customer who commits to licensing Windows under their EA is required to purchase a Windows Enterprise Upgrade with Software Assurance (SA) for each qualifying device, including Macs. Such purchases would occur at the start of an EA, and subsequently as part of the contract’s annual True-Up process, whereby the customer takes an inventory of software use to determine the number of licenses required for compliance, compares it with the previous year’s figures, and if necessary purchases additional licenses to cover any increase. (“Qualifying device” is defined in the customer’s Enterprise Agreement Enrollment contract, also known as the Desktop EA.)

The Windows licenses sold through EAs (and most other volume licensing programs) are Upgrade licenses and require that a device already have a preexisting license for a “qualifying OS,” such as Windows 7 Professional or Windows 8 Pro, typically acquired with the hardware when purchased from a PC manufacturer. However, when it comes to Macs, the EA has a quirk—the Mac OS is considered a qualifying OS for Macs included at the start of any EA, but not for Macs added during subsequent True-Ups. (The list of Qualifying OSs appears in a chart in the monthly Product List; OSs considered qualifying OSs at the start of an EA have checks in a “New EA” column, and OSs considered qualifying OSs at True-Up time have checks in the “Existing EA” column.)