Category: licensing

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Windows 7 Enterprise SKU


As we all know, there are going to be a number of different version of Windows 7 and, as with Vista, I’m particularly interested to see what extra features/benefits customers will receive if they get the Enterprise SKU. Luckily, Gavriella Schuster over at Windows Team Blog has a post about just that 🙂

As with Vista, the Enterprise SKU is only available to customers who have current Software Assurance (SA) on their desktop OS licences and/or buy new licence with SA. The list of Enterprise Specific features includes:

DirectAccess:This is one feature that I’m really excited by. Being able to get rid of or at least reduce the dependency on, VPN’s would be a huge boost for the vast majority of corporate customers I speak to; and I think this could well be the big driving force that pushed people towards this top end licence.

BranchCache: Helps reduce branch office connectivity problems and network speeds by caching information on local servers.

Enterprise Search Scopes: allows IT administrators to populate links to the commonly used internal sites — for example, SharePoint sites – to the Windows Explorer UI or to the Start menu or in Windows 7, using Group Policy.

BitLocker & BitLocker to Go: protect data on PCs and removable drives, with manageability to enforce encryption and backup of recovery keys. BitLocker to Go extends this to removal USB drives.

AppLocker: is a flexible, easy-to-use mechanism that enables IT professionals to specify exactly what is allowed to run on user desktops. It restricts unauthorized software while allowing applications, installation programs, and scripts that users need. This is also an excellent new feature, controlling what users do on their desktops can be the hardest part of Corporate IT and this goes a long way to making Admin’s lives much easier 🙂

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Optimizations: Windows 7 provides for better user experience in VDI scenarios, with better graphics, audio and local device support.

Multi Lingual User Support: the Language Packs in Windows 7 Enterprise enable you to support up to 36 different languages using a single Windows master image, rather than creating a separate image for each language used in the organization. This will makes things much easier for customers that have centralised IT across Europe and/or companies that have various nationalities in one office (like our HQ).

Also, the allowance to run 4 virtual instances of the desktop OS is still included along with the Sub-System for Unix Apps and it includes the rights to network boot Windows.

I don’t think the uptake of Vista Enterprise has taken the world by storm and I imagine it is lower that MS hoped but I think that will all change with Windows 7. The main reason our clients consider Vista Enterprise is for the virtual licences and that’s it but Windows 7 Enterprise offers a number of good reasons to pay the extra cost.

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Windows 7 versions


As with Vista, there are going to be various versions of Windows 7, according to CNET:

“Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. Unlike with Vista, however, the Home Basic version will be sold only in emerging markets.”

I’m a huge fan of Windows 7 and also a big fan of Vista AND my job mainly revolves around Microsoft licensing-but even I think all these version is overkill. It confuses people and makes them apprehensive about buying a new licence-and people often hate what they don’t understand; I really think all these extra versions were a big part of Vista’s problem. It also makes it much more likely that people will buy a version of the OS that doesn’t include all the features they want and while MS have gone some way to combat this feature disparity (I.e. Pro will include Media Center), it isn’t perfect.

It seems a lot of people have been worrying that they wouldn’t be able eligible for an upgrade licence unless they were running Vista, but that of course isn’t the case. All those XP users are perfectly able to purchase the Upgrade SKU to their chosen Windows 7 version.

That said, the beta of Windows 7 is fantastic and you should definitely look at upgrading as soon as it’s available 🙂

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Performance Point Server killed off?


Performance Point Server (PPS) has been part of the Microsoft product portfolio for a while now but, as far as I can tell, it hasn’t really made much of an impact. It’s been the top-end, full featured Business Intelligence (BI) product but the uptake hasn’t been amazing and MS announce there won’t be another standalone version of PPS, making Performance Point Server 2007 the last.

A lot of clients I work with who you would expect to jump on PPS have stayed away and they aren’t the only ones. The impression I get is that most people are unsure about Microsoft’s credentials in this part of the BI arena; they’re not sure that PPS will stack up against competitors such as SAP (Business Objects), Oracle (Hyperion) and IBM (Cognos) when it gets to the nitty gritty high end enterprise features. PPS isn’t cheap-coming in at around 17K-and when companies invest at that kind of level, they need to be completely confident they will get the best possible return on their investment.

However, this isn’t the end for Performance Point Server, or at least it’s component parts. As expected the scorecarding, dashboard and analytics features will all be folded into Sharepoint 14 (due this year/early 2010) and the new “Performance Point Services for Sharepoint” will be available via the Enterprise CAL.

I think this is a really good idea and will certainly increase peoples usage of MS BI and thus help increase their market share. The proliferation of MOSS 2007 (Sharepoint) throughout all market sectors means an amazing amount of people will have much easier access to these tools. It will make it yet another compelling reason for people to make the move to Sharepoint and for those that already have (but didn’t take Software Assurance)-a good reason to upgrade. By removing a product from the portfolio it looks like MS will increase the use of that product as well as grow it’s (Sharepoint) revenue at the same time…good skills 🙂

From the official statement:

“Additionally, in the summer of 2009, we will release ‘Service Pack 3′ for PerformancePoint Server 2007, which will include updates to the Planning module. From there we will focus our development on the new monitoring and analytic capabilities in ‘PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint’ and will not offer standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server.”

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Office for Sales: New Office 14 Product


It seems there will be a new component of Office 14, Office for Sales.

Mary Jo Foley has some info from Alpha Testers that shows: 

  • It’s an end-to-end CRM product that will incorporate both software and services components
  • The product is based on and hooked inextricably into SharePoint Server
  • Developers will be able to customize the system to integrate with third-party products, like Siebel CRM
  • Features include the ability to store customer information in Outlook; maintenance of a centralized Sales Center SharePoint site; the creation of sales communities; and support for “sales interaction management” (SIM)

It seems that Sharepoint Server 14 will offer offline support and this will be available with Office for Sales too.

To me, as a Microsoft reseller, this is pretty exciting. It’s going to give a lot of companies a real reason to upgrade to Office 14, which to be honest I feel was missing somewhat from Office 2007. It should also allow resellers that don’t work in the Dynamics/CRM arena to offer CRM services and support to their customers. The fact that it is tightly hooked in to Sharepoint should also help drive further adoption of that technology.

I think this should turn out to be another great move from MS, which will help their partners and customers become more successful, as well as showing that Redmond is still innovating and pushing forwards. I’m looking forward to Office 14 more all the time and this certainly helps 😉

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Free Vista to Windows 7 Upgrades


Tech ARP are reporting that Microsoft plan to offer free upgrades to Windows 7 to customers purchasing new Vista machines as 1st of July 2009, a great indicator of the timescale until release.

They appear to have obtained a copy of the draft proposal that was sent to OEM’s in December, outlining Microsoft’s proposal for this scheme. It includes info such as:

The only Windows Vista® versions eligible for the program are :

  1. Windows Vista® Home Premium
  2. Windows Vista® Business
  3. Windows Vista® Ultimate

* Microsoft Windows Vista® Home Basic, Windows Vista® Starter Edition, and Windows® XP (all editions) are not qualifying products under the program.
 

and

“The Program does not support multiple upgrades for medium, large, or enterprise customers. Customers that want to upgrade multiple PCs should use the appropriate Microsoft Volume Licensing program.”

so this is clearly aimed at consumers and small businesses.

Thanks to Mary Jo Foley for posting this first…

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Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Comparison


Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 still has the usual 2 versions of the server product, but it now also comes with two versions of CALs, Std and Enterprise. Here I hope to highlight the main differences between the 2 servers editions and also explain why there are more CALs, how they differ and when you’ll need them.

Exchange Server 2007 comes in both Standard and Enterprise versions, as did previous versions of the product. Standard is aimed at the small to medium business while Enterprise is for the larger companies that need the increased functionality.

Exchange Server 2007 Edition Offerings

Feature

Standard Edition

Enterprise Edition

Storage Group Support

5 storage groups

50 storage groups

Database Support

5 databases

50 databases

Database Storage Limit

16 TB per database

16 TB per database

Single Copy Clusters

Not supported

Supported

Local Continuous Replication

Supported

Supported

Cluster Continuous Replication

Not supported

Supported

Standby Continuous Replication ***

Supported

Supported

***Offered via Service Pack 1

As you can see, the Enterprise Edition is aimed at the higher end companies who have many thousands of users and/or require high levels of redundancy via the clustering options.

The CALs also come in Standard and Enteprise Editions, but they can be used with either server version so you can have Std Server with Enterprise CALs, an Enterprise Server with Standard CALs or a mixture of the two.

The Standard CAL(surprisingly!) offers the standard functionality you’d expect from Microsoft Exchange- access to email, shared calendars and Outlook Web Access (OWA).

The Enterprise CAL is an additive meaning it must sit on top of an already purchased Standard CAL. The Enterprise CAL offers extra features including Unified Communications and ForeFront Security. A full comparison can be found here.

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Microsoft Project Edition Comparison


Microsoft Project is a very popular, industry wide Project Planning tool that comes in 2 basic forms, Standard Edt and Professional Edt. As with most Microsoft products, there are various differences between the 2 versions that can make all the difference when deciding which one to buy for you & your company.

One of the main differences is collaboration. Standard is a stand alone product for Project Managers that do not need to collaborate and work with others on projects; while Project Pro allows people to collaborate across enterprises via Project Server (which is a separate product).

The Microsoft Comparison Chart shows the features of the different versions (including Web Access) side by side to help make your decision a little easier.

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Microsoft Office 2007 Edition Comparison


With the current 2007 release, there are a number of different versions of Microsoft Office. They all contain different products and they all come with different price tags so making sure you pick the right one is definitely important.

The full comparison chart for the different versions of Office can be found here but I’m going to cover the main differences below.

What are the different editions?

There are 5 separate version of Microsoft Office 2007 and these are:

The first thing to note is that ALL the versions include Word, Powerpoint & Excel. If those three applications are all you need, then Standard is the best edition for you as it is the cheapest*, and Standard also includes Outlook, as do all the version other than Home & Student. (*This is assuming you’re licensing this within a Corporate environment, as Home & Student isn’t valid for business use.)

  • Access is only available with Pro & Ultimate.
  • OneNote is included only with Home & Student and Ultimate.
  • Small Business includes Accounting Express.
  • Groove & InfoPath are included with Ultimate only.
  • Office Home & Student allows for installation on up to 3 devices in the same household via retail, but not OEM (pre-installed).

Applications such as Access, OneNote, InfoPath, Outlook and Groove can all be purchased separately to work alongside an existing office installation. So for example, you could buy Office Standard and then get OneNote separately.

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Microsoft Online Services


Microsoft Online Services are getting ever closer to being a reality in the corporate world, with the official US launch on Monday (17-11-08). The UK launch will follow in the Spring so around March/April 2009.

The first acronym was SAAS or “Software-As-A-Service” with perhaps the biggest example being Salesforce.com, the CRM system. This is an online only model where the customer doesn’t have anything “on-premise” (installed at the customer site) and instead it is all in the “Cloud” (the internet). Microsoft realised that that doesn’t always suit all customers..they often like to have at least some portion of the software installed on-premise too, be it for Disaster Recovery, integration with other existing systems, high levels of customization and many other reasons so they invented Software+Services. The “Plus” is the key..customers can have the software on premise, in the cloud or a mix of both giving them a greater level of flexibility.

Microsoft Online Services AKA BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) provides corporate users with Microsoft hosted versions of the software, accessed via the internet. The products included in the BPOS Suite are:

  • Exchange Online
  • Sharepoint Online
  • Office Communications Server (OCS)*
  • Live Meeting

*It’s to be noted that OCS isn’t available as yet and will be making an appearance a little while into 2009.

Mary Jo Foley has a new post with info on future S+S offerings from Microsoft. Their stated aim is to have a web-based service to match all their exisitng on-premise offerings and it looks like ForeFront Security and System Center Management tools are the next in the line up. This would likely encompass anti-virus, web/content filtering, firewalls, online backup, disaster recovery and more-quite a good string to their bow.

Some people might wonder what the point of this is and while there are many reasons that customers will looks at BPOS, here are what I see as the 2 key drivers.

The Small to Medium Business (SMB’s)

I first took a real look at BPOS over at the WPC in Houston and right away I could see the potential for SMB’s. These are customers typically around the 50-100 user mark (although they could be smaller/bigger) who love the features of (usually) Sharepoint server and can see that collaboration, enhanced search, wiki’s, portals and more would benefit their business by increasing efficiency. However, they often can’t afford the initial monetary outlay for Sharepoint and/or don’t have the people to deploy, configure and maintain a Sharepoint installation.

Typically this brings an end to the matter until the customer increases in size to make the internal administration do-able or they find a chunk of cash down the back of the sofa 😉 BPOS however, will be a perfect solution as it can resolve both the afore mentioned issues.

Because BPOS is hosted at Microsoft’s DataCenters in The Cloud, the customer doesn’t need to worry about learning the skills to deploy and configure the software at installation, ensuring they have the people and time to perform ongoing maintenance, deploying updates & patches-Microsoft will take care of all that.

Because BPOS is charged on a monthly basis, this allows customers to spread the costs over the course of the 12 months, rather than paying it all in one hit up-front.

The Busy Corporate

In some ways this is similar to the first example but it applies to bigger companies. Most corporates around the 300+ user mark have a very long to-do list..upgrade network switching, implement SAN (Storage Area Network), desktop refresh, move to a virtual infrastructure and so on. Added into/onto a list like this, deploying something such as Sharepoint or Office Communications Server can seem a daunting, perhaps impossible task to system admins. They’ll need to purchase and deploy new servers, perhaps upgrade parts of the network to cope with the increased demand, add extra security and plenty more which can mean that the timescales for deployments such as this are quite lengthy and keep growing.

BPOS can cut through all that. The busy admins don’t need to do anything other than grant users access to the services. As they don’t need to deploy, upgrade or install anything-the implementation timescales can be drastically reduced, which is good for all involved.

BPOS will allow companies to realise the many benefits that these Microsoft products can offer them much quicker than is currently possible.

Although the BPOS suite includes all the mentioned products, they are also available individually which gives customers the flexibility to have, for example, an on-premise Exchange server with a Cloud based Sharepoint server. Alternatively you can have the same product both on-premise and online so a big corporate HQ could have Exchange onsite, while their satellite offices could use the MS hosted version.

As for the licensing side of things, I do have some info. Customers that have current Software Assurance (SA) will be able to purchase the services at a reduced cost to reflect their already increased investment in MS technology, and they will need to keep their SA current alongside their BPOS licensing. This means should they choose to move away from BPOS at a later date, they will still be fully licensed for the most current perpetual versions of the software too. Customers that don’t have SA will have to purchase a User Subscription Licence (USL) to gain access to the BPOS suite. Should they choose to revert back to soley on-premise software, they won’t retain any entitlement to the software (as it is a non-perpetual subscription).

Many people view S+S as a bit of a black art or perhaps a fad but I really think this is a watershed moment for anyone that uses software. The companies that embrace Software+Services from the start, be they MS partners or end users, will really have an advantage over their competitors in the long run. As a Microsoft Gold Partner I’m very excited about the new things that BPOS will bring along 🙂

*Update* I heard today direct from Microsoft that Dynamics CRM will be available as an online version in July 2010, so a little while yet.

If you have any questions or comments about moving to a Microsoft hosted solution, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll help you out as best I can!

Cheers

Rich

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Microsoft System Center Essentials


Microsoft System Center Essentials (SCE) 2007 SP1 is a management product suite designed for the medium sized business.

System Center Essentials 2007 provides a unified management solution that enables IT professionals in midsize organizations to proactively manage their IT environment with increased efficiency.

  • Unified Experience
    Essentials 2007 provides a unified solution to help optimize the experience of performing a broad set of tasks across your entire IT environment. You also get a single console from which you can view and manage your servers, clients, hardware, software, and IT services.

  • Proactive Management
    Essentials 2007 accelerates troubleshooting and problem resolution. It’s a self-managing solution that notifies you as soon as a problem occurs, then helps you proactively diagnose and fix it, accelerating problem resolution. Essentials 2007 also automates system updates and data collection for your IT environment, so it’s more secure and up-to-date.

  • Increased Efficiency
    Essentials 2007 simplifies complex management tasks like packaging and deploying software, adding Web site monitoring, and creating and configuring group policy. Essentials 2007 wizards also help you quickly and easily configure security settings, deploy updates, and discover assets.

System Center Essential 2007 is limited to managing 30 servers and 500 clients, these can be physical and/or virtual. Microsoft also say that while there are no actual limitations on how many SNMP capable network devices you can manage, performance paramaters may limit you to approx. 75 devices.

To manage additional devices you can purchase further Management Licence (ML) packs (up to the 30 servers/500 clients limit) but “all purchases of additional ML license packs must be made through the same channel on which the Essentials Server was purchased; additional ML License Packs purchased through Volume License will not work on Retail and OEM Essentials Server installations”.

If you grow beyond the limit of 30 servers and 500 clients, you can migrate to the full versions of System Center Operations Manager and System Center Config Manager. More info can be found here.

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