Enterprise Agreements

Accessible to companies with 250 PCs or more, an Enterprise Agreement (EA) is a type of site license that lets an organization use certain Microsoft software, such as Office, on all users’ desktop and laptop PCs. EAs offer the best discounts of any Microsoft volume licensing program, about 15% greater than a customer would get through a Select agreement for similar software with upgrade rights. Software licensed through an EA includes full upgrade and downgrade rights, so an organization has the freedom to deploy the latest—or any earlier—version of specific software on any of its PCs, without keeping the detailed records that Open License and Select agreements require.

Microsoft offers two EA plans—one providing conventional perpetual licenses, the other allowing customers to subscribe to software on an annual basis. These two plans are similar to the two types of Open Value Company-Wide plans, except that EAs are targeted at larger customers. (For a comparison of the two programs, see the sidebar “Comparing EAs with Open Value“.)