Understanding Open Licensing, by Matt McSpirit

I would classify myself as a technical chap, yet when I’m out and about with Partners and Customers, I regularly engage in licensing discussions, usually around Windows Server, Virtualisation, and more increasingly, VDI.  I’m by no means a licensing expert, but I can hold my own, and can articulate the information correctly, however one aspect I always come unstuck with, is the different licensing models.

Should I go for Open?  What about Select?  Do I need an Enterprise Agreement?  What’s the difference?  Aaaarhhh!

Well, firstly, I’d always recommend speaking to your licensing specialist, whether it’s in house, or at a dedicated licensing Partner.  A number of our System Integrators have forged fantastic, mutually beneficial relationships with resellers and licensing specialist, and it’s working well for them.  However, if you need a quick update, and if, like me, you’re on the technical side of things, but want an appreciation of the licensing models, this document may be able to help you .  This document talks about all of the main licensing models, offering a fair amount of useful info around each one, and where one is perhaps more suited than another.

Typically, if you are a company of less than 250 seats, or you’re a Partner working with a Customer of less than 250 seats, then an Open Program is more than likely going to be the best option for you, however Open can still apply to organisations up to 750 seats, at which point, Select or EA could have also been relevant!  Again, the document would help you with deciding.

If you do decide on Open, is that the end of the decision process?  Nope!  There’s Open Licence, Open Value, and Open Value Subscription to choose from!  Within Open Value, there’s also company-wide and non-company-wide considerations to make!  As you can see, it’s easy to start getting lost in the intricacies of it all, so again, the document will help, as will speaking to a dedicated licensing specialist/reseller, but, there is a third way to gain a little bit of clarification, and it comes in the form of this short video:

(Click image to Play)

I hope you find it as useful as I did!