Microsoft Licensing
As Microsoft solution and licensing experts, we help organisations achieve their objectives through the use of Microsoft’s extensive range of products and services.
Microsoft has a huge and fast-evolving suite of products with many requiring specialist knowledge to understand, deploy and integrate with other products inside and outside of the Microsoft ecosystem and that’s where we can help.
In the past, companies would install important software, like Microsoft Office, onto their IT systems. They would purchase perpetual licenses that never expired and had no option to upgrade. These licenses would receive support from Microsoft for bug fixes for approximately 3 to 4 years and security updates for up to 10 years.
This is easily demonstrated by looking at versions of Microsoft Office that tie into the year of their release. Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019 for Windows are available to buy for 3 to 4 years before a new version enters the market. Whilst each version of Microsoft Office had a large amount of interoperability with its predecessor, organisations were routinely faced with having a mix of products or keeping older versions of software for longer due to the cost implications of upgrading quite costly software over a relatively short product lifespan. This was further complicated by the need for third-party applications that tied into Microsoft’s suite of products to go through their own upgrade and processes to ensure compatibility with any new releases.
Smaller organisations would tend to buy these licenses via retail outlets, while larger organisations would purchase via Microsoft Open License subscriptions. Which were typically more expensive, but could give limited future upgrade rights of up to two years through the purchase of Software Assurance. To make things more complicated, some licenses were user-based, device-based, and hardware specific – often multiple versions of the same product offering different features.
Today and whilst many of the mentioned licensing options remain, most licenses are now by monthly subscription and provide the latest versions of the products with inbuilt flexibility to adjust these licenses on a month-by-month basis. We have seen a surge in the speed at which new products are released and the rate at which they are updated and enhanced.
This is also aided by a large number of products available via a web browser, reducing their need to tie directly into applications that would have sat on users’ machines or companies’ servers. Further, there is far more interoperability and overlap between products in the Microsoft eco-system with Microsoft launching product suites, such as the Microsoft Business Suite or the Microsoft Enterprise and Mobility Suite (EMS) plans where multiple products are combined, at a reduced cost, addressing the needs of specific use cases.
Perhaps more than ever, seeking advice from an expert Microsoft partner helps organisations to identify the best licensing mix to meet their specific business needs.
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Being recognised by CloudTango as one of the top 50 Managed Service Providers (MSP) of the UK in 2021 is a great accolade to our work. Exeter College and ourselves being shortlisted as the small employer of the year in 2020 for our work with apprentices over the years. In 2018, we won the business service category of the Exeter Living Awards.
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