Software Assurance

Software Assurance is Microsoft’s software maintenance plan. Among other things, SA provides the right to upgrade at any time to new product versions released during the term of coverage. For example, an Office 2007 license covered by SA when the next version of Office (code-named Office 14) is released can be upgraded to Office 14 at any point in the future for no additional charge.

SA is automatically included when organizations purchase Office under an Enterprise Agreement and is an add-on option when Office is purchased via Select or the most popular Open volume licensing programs. The SA annual fee is 29% of the original license price for Office desktop product licenses (and 25% for server-related licenses).

To get SA on a license acquired through Select or Open volume plans, SA must be purchased with the license; it cannot be added later. Among other things, this prevents an organization from getting a heavily discounted upgrade by buying SA on an existing license just before Microsoft releases a new version. If a volume licensing customer elects not to purchase SA and later wants to upgrade Office, it must purchase new Office licenses. Customers who acquire Office Small Business 2007 or Office Professional 2007 through the OEM channel may also purchase SA through Select or Open volume plans, as long as they do so within 90 days from the date the OEM licenses were acquired.