Volume Pricing Decoded

The text above is taken from Microsoft’s Product Catalog, which is online at www.microsoft.com/catalog. It offers a glimpse of volume licensing discounts, but reading it requires some prior knowledge about Microsoft’s volume licensing plans because many of the terms that appear here are archaic.

The first product bears the title Microsoft Visio Standard 2002 Win32 English Open Level C OLP C. If we parse this title, we see the following elements:

The name of the product: Microsoft Visio Standard 2002.

The OS on which it runs: Win32. (The most common other option is Macintosh.)

The language for this particular version: English. (Microsoft products come in many languages, and prices can vary by language.)

The volume licensing plan and discount for which this price is relevant: Open Level C OLP C.

The volume licensing plan and discount data (OLP C is an abbreviation for Open License Plan Level C) can be confusing, because the Open License plan has not had a “Level C” for several years. This abbreviation actually represents the price for any customer using the Open Volume plan.