MOM 2005 Ships with New Licensing Model

Highlights of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005-software for centrally monitoring and managing the health of servers-include scalability, security, and management pack improvements; a new reporting system; a new operator’s console; and a new, less-expensive Workgroup Edition aimed at small businesses. However, Microsoft has changed how it licenses the full version: even though all management packs are now free, a shift from per-processor to per-server licenses plus managed device licenses will make it pricier in many scenarios.

Licensing Now Similar to SMS

MOM 2000 required per-processor Base Licenses for the MOM server and each managed server, and separate per-processor licenses for Application Management Packs (MPs)-sets of rules and scripts that define healthy application behavior needed to manage certain Microsoft server products.

Customers license MOM 2005, in contrast, with a Base License for the server running MOM and an Operations Management License (OML) for each managed server, irrespective of the number of processors. In this model, all MPs are free.