Licensing Office for Various Desktop Architectures

Organizations have many options for providing users with a Windows desktop running Office, thanks to faster networks, better protocols for working with remote instances of the OS, and other advances. This chart outlines the main options along with an explanation of which devices require an Office license. (Windows OS-related licenses required in the same scenarios are covered in the sidebar “Licensing Desktop OS Architectures” on page 15 of the Sept. 2008 Update.)

In the most common case, an Office application or suite is installed and runs on a user’s PC and is accessed from the same device. Each such device requires a license for Office. When an Office application or suite is installed and executed on one device, but accessed via a second, the second device also requires an Office license. For example, each Windows terminal device (i.e., thin client) used to access Office running on a Terminal Server requires an Office license, but the Terminal Server itself does not need to be assigned any Office licenses. While most Office licenses can be permanently transferred between devices—for example, when a device is retired—customers cannot exploit the transfer provision to reallocate licenses constantly in an effort to cap their Office license purchases at the maximum number of concurrent clients.