When Microsoft announced enhancements to its Licensing 6.0 and Software Assurance plan on Tuesday, the news had already found its way onto international sites. No local news is available yet, with the vendor briefing the media on the changes tomorrow.
The licensing model, heavily criticised for its cost, lack of attractive maintenance features and the company`s supposed strong-arming of customers into buying upgrades, was tweaked to address some of these issues, but falls short in some respects.
The changes will benefit existing Software Assurance customers and all those who sign up going forward, the company says. They will include free training, support and the right to use Microsoft Office on customers` home computers.
Free lunch
Customers will get Microsoft`s e-learning online training module and vouchers allowing free classroom training from its Certified Technical Education Centres, for certification in running Microsoft products.
The benefits scale, depending on how many licences a customer buys and under which programme. A customer under an Enterprise Agreement could get up to 150 single-day training vouchers for the life of their contract, whereas smaller customer might get three or four. "In general, the more Software Assurance you buy from us, the more benefits we will provide you," says a spokesperson.
Additional technical support for server products is broken down according to whether customers have the standard or enterprise version, and depends on the licensing programme. It ranges from free Web-based technical support during business hours to unlimited free phone support anytime.
All Software Assurance customers will also get free licences for TechNet, which costs about $1 000 per user on average. In addition, the company is rolling out the Corporate Error Reporting 2.0 software tool, which will send error reports to the IT manager, rather than directly to Microsoft, as is now the case.
Also, the Microsoft Windows Pre-installation Environment tool, available to Microsoft`s largest enterprise customers, will now be available to all Software Assurance customers.
Microsoft has also decided to give customers running Office under Software Assurance home-use rights for the software, in the ratio of one home use right for every one Office Software Assurance licence held. In order not to make this complicated for customers, who had told Microsoft they did not want any added burden, Microsoft is avoiding the need to involve the IT manager for this.
The home-use rights will also apply to Microsoft Project and Visio customers. Microsoft is giving those home users discounts of more than 30% on retail prices if they want to buy up to three additional desktop Microsoft software products.
Customers may still grumble that, even with free support, Software Assurance is priced at 25% of the software cost per annum. This is more than competitors, which can be as low as 22%.
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