The Transition to Software Assurance

To help customers make the transition to Volume Licensing 6.0 and Software Assurance (SA), Microsoft instituted a transition period. The transition period was necessary because the Volume Licensing 6.0 rules dictate that SA, the only upgrade available, may only be purchased at the same time as the full product. Without the transition period, most products purchased before SA first became available on Oct. 1, 2001, would no longer have been upgradeable.

Special Rules

The transition period ran from Oct. 1, 2001, to July 31, 2002. During the transition period, the standard rules for SA were modified in the following ways:

Upgrade Advantage (UA) modifications. UA was an older upgrade plan that could be purchased at any time and that gave customers the right to upgrade to any new release of a product within the two years after UA was purchased. During the transition period, UA was still available for customers with Open and Select 5 licensing agreements. After the transition period ended, any UA rights were converted to SA rights. The main difference between the two programs was that UA could be used to upgrade older products; SA cannot. This transition allowed older software, such as Office 97, to be upgraded to Office XP. UA was no longer available after the transition period.