Microsoft understands its volume-licensing will need an overhaul if and when its customers and partners actually begin heading gung-ho for for your cloud.In the business;s fiscal 2011 (which runs from July 1, 2010, to June thirty, 2011), Microsoft will likely be doing the ground perform for an overhaul of its volume-licensing infrastructure and policies. But don;t anticipate any actual new applications throughout that period, according to Joe Matz, the Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Licensing and Pricing.Matz spoke at a session at Microsoft;s Worldwide Spouse Conference on July 13 about the corporation;s Huge Account Reseller (LAR) system.“A lot is changing in volume licensing,” Matz told the overflow crowd at yesterday;s session. “We;re heading huge with online services in volume licensing. We need to have to adapt volume licensing for online.”Microsoft is working on its back-end operations, systems and policies to enable this shift, he said. In addition to making licenses simpler and easier to manage, Microsoft understands it also needs to enable greater licensing flexibility, he said.Matz said his team;s second biggest priority in this fiscal year is to continue to modernize licensing.“Licensing is always going to be complex,
Microsoft Office 2007 Pro Plus,” Matz said, “but it needs to become simpler, more manageable, scalable and agile.”The team is working on ways to allow partners and consumers to attach new cloud technologies to existing licenses, rather than requiring clients to buy and manage new licenses every time they add a new technology to their existing Microsoft mix, he said. Microsoft also needs to make it easier for consumers to transition from on-premises software to services on the licensing front.He said to anticipate Microsoft to do more to integrate Microsoft financing with licensing in the coming year. Matz said more than 7,000 Microsoft clients in 15 countries spend billions per year with Microsoft to finance their technology purchases.“Credit prices last year had an impact on us,
Windows 7 X64,” he admitted. “But we now have our model back online and getting back to growth in this space is a priority.”Matz didn;t mention the meltdown with Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) earlier this year. Microsoft ended up having to roll out a “version 3.5″ of the site, incorporating new fixes and updates, because many buyers and partners were unable for months to access their volume software licenses and products.In addition to discussing volume-licensing in the LAR session, Microsoft officials also shared a few interesting statistics about the company;s companion hierarchy.Microsoft has 22,000 “major accounts,” 80 percent of which are covered by Enterprise Agreement (EA) licenses with the corporation. The firm has another 92,
Windows 7 32bit,000 “corporate accounts” that it targets, only 19 percent of which are currently covered by an EA. (This is the group of consumers that are still running lots of Windows XP, older versions of Office and no SQL Server, provider execs acknowledged.) There are 5.3 million small/midsize company (SMB) Microsoft accounts clients out there,
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, as well. (I didn;t catch how many the organization is claiming are Microsoft accounts.)Across all categories, Microsoft still is seeing a lot of CIOs fear the unknown with the cloud, officials acknowledged,
Office 2007 Standard, meaning there will still be “years ahead” of selling on-premises software for Microsoft;s partners.