Microsoft offers subscription licensing for small businesses
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InfoWorld - Microsoft is offering a new subscription model to small businesses that will allow them to use the company's software for less cost than the currently available licensing model.
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Faced with continued customer foot-dragging on license renewals and deployment, Microsoft said Friday has decided to offer &quot;custom&quot; Windows NT 4.0 support contracts to enterprises that still haven&#39;t migrated to later versions of the network operating
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Microsoft Corp. hopes to better meet the back-office needs of smaller businesses with a new take on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software called Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution.
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The British National Health Service (NHS) has signed a massive software licensing deal with Microsoft. The deal will ultimately save the NHS $625 million in licensing fees, as well as requiring that Microsoft
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LicenseWise and Windows Vista Hardware Assessment help users navigate Microsoft offerings.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft continues to tweak its volume licensing programs to make it easier for business customers to purchase the company's software in bulk. This week, Microsoft said it was reducing the length of three of its volume-licensing agreements between 10 percent to 50 percent, changes that affect the Enterprise Agreement, Enterprise Subscription, Select License, Open Value, Open Value Subscription and Open License volume licensing agreements. Microsoft also has made it easier for customers to navigate license information and sign up online, the company said. The changes will be implemented in the course of its fiscal year 2008, which began July 1. Microsoft has been amending different aspects of its volume licensing programs over the last several years in an effort to make them less complicated and expensive for customers. Volume licensing is how business customers buy Microsoft products. The company also faces pressure from changing industry dynamics where products are being licensed on a subscription basis rather than through complicated, long-term licenses. Microsoft is keeping up with some of these changes by increasingly offering business software as subscription-based services but still has a history of complex product licensing to contend with. Specifically, Microsoft said it will reduce the number of price points and SKUs for each of its volume licensing programs, which will simplify customers' search for specific product pricing. Currently, Microsoft has more than 8 million price points worldwide, which makes it confusing for customers to navigate through them. To reduce the number of price points, individual product SKUs with the same pricing will change to one term, called "Single Language," the company said. For example, a product like the SQL Server database has versions for different languages. If the product is only for one language, such as English, and is priced the same as other versions for other languages, the products now will be listed as "SQL Server Single Language" rather than with each language version listed individually, Microsoft said. According to Microsoft, just doing this reduces price points in the Select program by 51 percent and the number of product SKUs by 72 percent. In the Open Value program, price points are reduced by 50 percent and SKUs by 51 percent, and in the Open License program, prices points are reduced by 32 percent and the number of SKUs by 33 percent, the company said. Microsoft also has made some content changes to all of its volume licensing agreements to streamline the language used in themÂ and has added a table of contents and summary titles to agreements to make them easier for customers to navigate. In addition to the changes, Microsoft also is launching a Volume Licensing Service Center online that will help customers manage their volume licenses. The service center will provide downloads to software that customers are eligible to receive under their agreements, and also allow them to view and request Volume Licensing Product Keys for software in their agreements. Additionally, customers can calculate license statements on the Web site.
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Microsoft Corp. has signed up the first licensee for the workgroup server protocols the European Commission ordered it to open up to competitors in a 2004 antitrust ruling, it said Thursday.
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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday agreed to require only a single license for server software that runs on computers powered by a new generation of chips
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The company plans to making available free software that connects its Windows operating system to software services delivered on the Internet.
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Office Live Small Business gives the nationâs 25 million small businesses the same online tools that the big boys use, and it shows Microsoft can still produce fresh ideas and polished work.
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Microsoft (Quote, Chart) said it has clarified its software licensing policies to address a new trend in microprocessors and to keep the pressure on its rivals.
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Microsoft says it's working to fix a glitch that stopped some customers from taking advantage of offer to get additional licenses for less.
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Continuing its push to grab larger chunks of the SMB (small and midsize business) markets, Microsoft on Friday confirmed it will ship a low-end accounting package -- code-named Magellan -- with a new version of Office, and the two will work in concert.
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This afternoon, Microsoft confirmed to BetaNews it has added three sets of APIs and protocols to its intellectual property portfolio, for availability to corporate developers and other partners between now and next June.  Itâs generally not a free license, but the intention is to give partners who do have the intention to build on these protocols a way to do so, without Microsoft giving away secrets to its competitors.
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Microsoft is launching free software to make it easier for developers to create software compatible with Windows Server 2008.
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A pilot program at the Microsoft Download Center will require users to validate their Windows license in exchange for access to file downloads. Users with counterfeit software may find themselves locked out altogether.
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Except for the subs, that is Microsoft has rejigged its Office Live Small Business product to pull in more customers by bringing three existing paid-for versions under one roof for free.â¦