How On-Premises and Cloud Virtualization Use Rights Differ

Virtualization rights conferred by some Microsoft server application licenses can differ depending on whether the licenses are applied to on-premises servers or multitenant servers hosted by a service provider.

License mobility through Software Assurance (SA), a new SA benefit that applies to most server application licenses as of July 2011, allows customers with SA on server application licenses to reassign these licenses to multitenant servers at a third-party service provider hoster. However, virtualization use rights are not necessarily the same when licenses are moved to the cloud. Among other things, the number of operating system environments (OSEs) covered by a single license and the amount of processor resources an OSE can use under the context of a single license can differ. (An OSE refers to an OS instance running on either a physical or virtual server; in the context of this discussion, OSE is usually synonymous with “virtual machine.”)

This chart lists server application licenses and key differences between their on-premises licensing use rights and corresponding licensing use rights when moved to multitenant servers hosted by a service provider hoster. Depending on the product, the results of moving a license to the cloud can vary significantly.