Software Assurance Benefits – Quick refresher

Last Thursday, I had the pleasure to meet with the LAR community following a session at the Royal York hotel presented by Gartner on how to address EA Renewal objections. One of the key points was the utilization of the SA Benefits available to our EA customers. This is a perfect opportunity to do a quick refresh on this topic.

I can’t stress enough how important Software Assurance Benefits are for our customers: understanding and consuming their software assurance benefits will help ensure customers get full value of their software investment. Having the right conversation at the right time could translate into a stronger appreciation of your role as a software advisor and the entire software assurance benefits offering.

In this week’s blog, I’ll focus on the 24x7 Problem Resolution Support, one of the more compelling benefits.

24x7 Incidents

Eligibility: incidents granted based on SA Spending on Server and Client licenses.

Servers used for mission-critical tasks or services like email, intranet, etc are the center piece of most organizations. Customers are often asking how they can get support on their servers in case of problem and that kind of service can quickly become very expensive when outsourced.

Through Software Assurance coverage, your customers can have:

- Support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You get around-the-clock phone support for business-critical issues. The number of phone incidents available depends on your Software Assurance investment.

- Extended product support coverage. You get phone support for all Microsoft servers, Microsoft Windows operating systems, and Microsoft Office system products and editions—even if the specific license requiring support does not have Software Assurance coverage.

- Unlimited online support. You get Web support during business hours for all Standard and Enterprise edition server products that are covered by Software Assurance.

You can also use this benefit as a starting point to initiate the conversation around Premier support: incidents can be converted into Premier hours at a 5.3h per incident.

Stay tuned for coverage on remaining SA Benefits and the value they bring to our customers.

May The Force of Licensing be With You
Mathias