Get help with Microsoft licensing
Directions of Microsoft is a quality analyst firm that does excellent work on Microsoft. It's no credit to Microsoft, however, that Directions on Microsoft is promoting a soon-to-be-released report called "Microsoft Volume Licensing Programs," with this marketing:
Microsoft investments inside enterprises have a big target on them, simply because they are so large. But organizations trying to scale back face a delicate three-way balancing act: Hitting the right mix of license price, administration costs, and software audit risk.
We at Directions On Microsoft can help navigate license purchasing decisions with our new "Microsoft Volume Licensing Programs" report, which will be released Wednesday, April 22...It also explores Microsoft's volume licensing programs in detail, highlighting similarities and differences across the programs, as well as their benefits and pitfalls.
Microsoft is a big company with a wide range of different products. So perhaps a certain amount of pricing complexity is to be expected.
But needing an analyst firm to navigate the pricing for you? I'm not suggesting that Directions on Microsoft's report is unnecessary; unfortunately, it's probably all too necessary, which is a sad statement on Microsoft, not the analyst firms that follow it.
Microsoft makes software that is relatively easy to use. Why can't it license that software with pricing that is relatively easy to understand?
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Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
- by pctec100 April 20, 2009 1:54 PM PDT
- It is no secret that MS licensing is a nightmare for corporations. The complexity of their licensing and the high prices charge for version upgrades is one of the primary reasons Vista adoption has been so slow. It is my understanding that many organizations have allowed their agreements to expire. If MS cannot get them back on board then Windows 7 will not be the success they are hoping for.
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