Microsoft says licensing protects customers
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A top Microsoft executive promoted the company's licensing of network security protocols at theÂ Interop trade showÂ on Wednesday, but not before taking time out during a keynote address to defend the company's patent licensing program for open-source software.
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Borrowing a line from Allstate Insurance, Microsoft says it wants customers to know they are in good hands when they choose its software.
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Wireless giant Qualcomm (Quote, Chart) has inked a licensing deal with Microsoft (Quote, Chart) it claims will make it easier to play audio and video on its handsets.
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In a bid to further differentiate itself from its Linux rivals, Microsoft has said it will expand its legal indemnification programme to cover almost all its customers.
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(InfoWorld) - A top Microsoft executive promoted the company's licensing of network security protocols at theÂ Interop trade showÂ on Wednesday, but not before taking time out during a keynote address to defend the company's patent licensing program for open-source software. Microsoft has licensed networking protocols to Juniper Networks as part of a program to make its network access protection software work with more networking vendors' products. It has also licensed protocols to Aruba Wireless Networks and network-attached storage vendor OnStor, said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business. Before bringing up those licensing deals in his keynote address Wednesday morning, Muglia offered an explanation for the software giant's recent moves toÂ license its software patents to open-source software distributors. "The commercial software industry knows how to work with intellectual property and patents," Muglia said. Commercial software like Microsoft's has numerous patent sublicenses built into it for technology from other vendors, so that when a customer buys Windows or another Microsoft product, they have the assurance that Microsoft has given them the intellectual property protection they need, he said. "Customers have indicated to us that it's problematic to them that when they work with open-source software, they don't have similar intellectual property protection," Muglia said. There is no mechanism to effectively license that software, he said. This creates a real problem for customers, and Microsoft's licensing program is designed to solve it, according to Muglia. However, Microsoft has been accused of creating that very problem. Its patent licensing deals with Novell and other companies have come under fire for creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt among users of open-source software. Muglia's theme was Microsoft's newfound focus on interoperability, including overtures to other companies in network security and unified communications, both hot topics at Interop. But one attendee said the company will have to overcome a years-long reputation for not working well with others. Microsoft must be serious about interoperability now because it has no choice, said Brian Shannon, an independent networking consultant to small businesses in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey. After all, with the proliferation of mobile devices, the company's desktop business is on the way out, he said.
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Microsoft Corp. announced today the expansion of its end-user intellectual property (IP) protection policy to cover customers using a wide range of current and earlier versions of its software.
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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is expanding its indemnification program for Windows and other software products in order to shield users from legal claims and patent
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The UK&#39;s National Health Service (NHS) has signed a software licensing deal with Microsoft Corp. that the NHS says will provide for the development of a user interface specifically designed for the organization
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Microsoft Corp.  is expanding its indemnification program for Windows and other software products in order to shield users from legal claims and patent disputes, the world's largest software maker said on Tuesday.
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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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TechWeb - Microsoft says software that&#39;s licensed under GPLv3 isn&#39;t covered by the patent protection deal it recently signed with desktop Linux distributor Linspire.
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Microsoft has entered into a licensing agreement with the nonprofit Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF) under which the software giant will be providing developers working on the Samba file and printing system with the information they need to ensure interoperability between their open-source software and Windows.
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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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(InfoWorld) - A U.K. company that has made a business out of selling preowned licenses for Microsoft Corp. products has brought its products to the U.S. for the first time. Disclic recently closed its first deal selling licenses it procured from companies going out of business in the U.K. to a company in the U.S., said Noel Unwin, a director of Discount-licensing.com, the Web site and trading arm of the company that sells the licenses. Discount-licensing.com sold licenses for Microsoft Office it obtained from two companies that divested their property in the U.K. -- Food Brokers and Quidnunc -- to WaferTech LLC, a U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, he said. Discount-licensing.com also recently made its first deal selling licenses it procured from a U.S. company to companies in the U.K., Unwin added. Discount-Licensing.com sold preowned licenses from an insolvent U.S.company, Cornell Trading Inc., to U.K. businesses in September and October. The U.K. businesses that purchased former Cornell Trading licenses were Benefit 2 Business, which purchase licenses for Exchange 2003; Abnormal Loads, which purchased licenses for Terminal Server 2003 CALs; 3D Computer Systems, which purchased licenses for Exchange, Windows and Terminal Server 2003 CALs; and Orange IS, which purchased Office 2003 Professional licenses. Unwin said his company did not sell preowned licenses in the U.S. until recently because it believed there would be license restrictions in reselling licenses from one region to another. Discount-licensing.com worked with Microsoft to ensure this was not the case before selling its licenses, he said. Microsoft could not be reached for comment through its public relations firm on Wednesday. But the company has acknowledged in the past it is legal to transfer product licenses for software owned by companies that are divesting. Disclic has built its Discount-licensing.com business since November 2005, gathering up Microsoft product licenses from insolvent companies and distributing them through its Web site. The company recently updated its site with comprehensive product search and ordering features, so customers can do their entire transactions online. Customers can access Discount-licensing.com's product search feature here Unwin said prices for U.S. customers are generally 15 percent less expensive than prices for U.K. customers. The company sells preowned licenses for about 35 percent to 40 percent cheaper than the original cost of the license. Because of these discounts, software resellers have been purchasing software from Discount-licensing.com to sell to their customers so they can make higher margins, Unwin added. Discount-licensing.com has added several hundred new customers so far in 2006, in addition to repeat customers. The most popular licenses the company sells are for Office XP, Unwin said. Other product licenses that do well include the SQL Server database and Exchange 2003 messaging server.
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Customers who use the dual-core processors that Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are expected to begin shipping next year will not need to buy extra licenses for Microsoft software, the software maker will announce next week.
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Linspire has signed an agreement with Microsoft that protects the Linux company's customers from patent claims.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has clarified how licensing for its current version of Windows Server works when paired with virtualization software. However, customers may face a whole new set of licensing rules once the next version, Windows Server 2008, is released later this year. In a white paper called "Licensing Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 to Run with Virtualization Technologies," Microsoft outlines clearly how to license the current version of Windows Server -- Windows Server 2003 R2 -- for specific third-party virtualization technology, including VMware ESX, VMware Vmotion and SWsoft Virtuozzo. It also explains licensing for Microsoft's own System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The document can be found on a Web page that also includes previously released virtualization calculators that help customers determine the cost of Windows Server licensing in various virtualization scenarios. Virtualization has complicated server OS pricing because it allows more than one instance of server software to run on a single server, while traditional OS pricing has been per server, assuming that only one version of an OS can run on one piece of hardware. Virtualization allows software to be emulated via a virtual machine, and so run without having to be physically installed. But even if Microsoft has done enough to clarify how its current version of Windows Server should be licensed for virtualization scenarios, customers could find themselves needing new guidelines once Windows Server 2008 is released, something Microsoft expects to do by the end of the year. Formerly code-named Longhorn, the next version of Windows Server will have virtualization technology built in, which could preclude the need for third-party virtualization software. "We believe most customers will choose to use Windows Server virtualization, which comes as a role within Windows Server 2008," said Microsoft spokesman Patrick O'Rourke. "But customers still have the option to use third-party server virtualization software on Windows Server 2008." Pricing for Windows Server 2008 has not yet been announced. According to the Microsoft white paper, current virtualization pricing for Windows Server 2003 R2 is as follows: Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition (SE) allows a customer to run only one instance of the software in either a physical or virtual way on a server. Users need to assign an SE license for each running instance of Windows Server on a system. Customers have more flexibility with the enterprise and datacenter editions of Windows Server 2003, however. They can run one physical instance of Windows Server and up to four simultaneous virtual instances with one Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition license, and can run unlimited physical or virtual versions of the software when Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition is licensed for every physical processor in a server Windows Server 2008 is currently available in a beta 3 version.