volume licensing
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I work for a smallish manufacturing company. We're looking at purchasing SQL Server 2005 for a project that I will be starting shortly as well as Exchange 2003 (downgraded license from 2007) and Windows Server 2003. Our supplier recommended that we do volume licensing and didn't really supply anything that would seem to be a consequence to volume licensing. Apparently, the requirements are pretty light (5 CALS) and you can increment at anytime as much as you need for the length of the contract. And there is a volume pricing discount to boot. Does anyone have anything they can add good or bad about using Microsoft volume licensing?
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I work for a smallish manufacturing company. We're looking at purchasing SQL Server 2005 for a project that I will be starting shortly as well as Exchange 2003 (downgraded license from 2007) and Windows Server 2003. Our supplier recommended that we do volume licensing and didn't really supply anything that would seem to be a consequence to volume licensing. Apparently, the requirements are pretty light (5 CALS) and you can increment at anytime as much as you need for the length of the contract. And there is a volume pricing discount to boot. Does anyone have anything they can add good or bad about using Microsoft volume licensing?
We use some, and it works OK. Keep in mind that without "Software Assurance", you don't get updates for these. So for OS and Office, a "System Builder" licence is often cheaper (but has a few more restrictions). Licences are managed through the eopen site: you need a .netpassport/windows live account, then you can enter the agreement number, and get a list of your licences with licence keys. Media has to be purchased separately (They often go for usually for €10..30 depending on media and supplier) The first 10 licences can come very cheap through the MS Action Pack (ca. €320 a year for loads of server software and office). However, I don't know if the Action Pack allows for downgrade licences.
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I work for a smallish manufacturing company. We're looking at purchasing SQL Server 2005 for a project that I will be starting shortly as well as Exchange 2003 (downgraded license from 2007) and Windows Server 2003. Our supplier recommended that we do volume licensing and didn't really supply anything that would seem to be a consequence to volume licensing. Apparently, the requirements are pretty light (5 CALS) and you can increment at anytime as much as you need for the length of the contract. And there is a volume pricing discount to boot. Does anyone have anything they can add good or bad about using Microsoft volume licensing?
A better way to go about it would be to enroll in the Microsoft Partner Program. All you need to do is sign up for it. no requirements at this point. And then you can access a benefit of a Registered Member called Action Pack Subscription, which contains these: [^] for a price tag around $350 for one year. After this period you can renew your license. You could also achieve a competency which will give you the status of Microsoft Certified Partner and acquire quite a lot of licenses for e very decent price.
cheers, Mircea "Pay people peanuts and you get monkeys" - David Ogilvy
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I work for a smallish manufacturing company. We're looking at purchasing SQL Server 2005 for a project that I will be starting shortly as well as Exchange 2003 (downgraded license from 2007) and Windows Server 2003. Our supplier recommended that we do volume licensing and didn't really supply anything that would seem to be a consequence to volume licensing. Apparently, the requirements are pretty light (5 CALS) and you can increment at anytime as much as you need for the length of the contract. And there is a volume pricing discount to boot. Does anyone have anything they can add good or bad about using Microsoft volume licensing?
Volume Licensing has a couple of good benifits. It does give a discounted price compared to retail, but the big benifits are 1 media pack for all installations which can save a lot of headaches when you start installing everything. You don't have to keep track of what pid goes with what media and things like that. Also tracking licenses through the eopen page keeps all of your license information in a central location. Jake, Buy Microsoft Software and Hardware Blog
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I work for a smallish manufacturing company. We're looking at purchasing SQL Server 2005 for a project that I will be starting shortly as well as Exchange 2003 (downgraded license from 2007) and Windows Server 2003. Our supplier recommended that we do volume licensing and didn't really supply anything that would seem to be a consequence to volume licensing. Apparently, the requirements are pretty light (5 CALS) and you can increment at anytime as much as you need for the length of the contract. And there is a volume pricing discount to boot. Does anyone have anything they can add good or bad about using Microsoft volume licensing?
You will keep paying Microsoft for the rest of eternity. At least SQL Server is a good product as it concerns databases...
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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You will keep paying Microsoft for the rest of eternity. At least SQL Server is a good product as it concerns databases...
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "keep paying", or is that just a slight on buying Microsoft software in general? Frankly, I like Microsoft most software. I love Visual Studio, OneNote, Office 2007 to name a few. (Hate the Money software, but hate Quicken even more.) The Windows experience could be better in some ways, but that is in my opinion largely subjective.
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We use some, and it works OK. Keep in mind that without "Software Assurance", you don't get updates for these. So for OS and Office, a "System Builder" licence is often cheaper (but has a few more restrictions). Licences are managed through the eopen site: you need a .netpassport/windows live account, then you can enter the agreement number, and get a list of your licences with licence keys. Media has to be purchased separately (They often go for usually for €10..30 depending on media and supplier) The first 10 licences can come very cheap through the MS Action Pack (ca. €320 a year for loads of server software and office). However, I don't know if the Action Pack allows for downgrade licences.
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Velopers, Develprs, Developers!
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
Linkify!|Fold With Us!peterchen wrote:
Keep in mind that without "Software Assurance", you don't get updates for these. So for OS and Office, a "System Builder" licence is often cheaper (but has a few more restrictions).
We don't quality for an OEM system builder license. We're a tool and die shop. We don't upgrade all that often, so I don't know if software assurance would be worth it -- what kind of cost is associated with that.
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A better way to go about it would be to enroll in the Microsoft Partner Program. All you need to do is sign up for it. no requirements at this point. And then you can access a benefit of a Registered Member called Action Pack Subscription, which contains these: [^] for a price tag around $350 for one year. After this period you can renew your license. You could also achieve a competency which will give you the status of Microsoft Certified Partner and acquire quite a lot of licenses for e very decent price.
cheers, Mircea "Pay people peanuts and you get monkeys" - David Ogilvy
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Can you elaborate on what you mean by "keep paying", or is that just a slight on buying Microsoft software in general? Frankly, I like Microsoft most software. I love Visual Studio, OneNote, Office 2007 to name a few. (Hate the Money software, but hate Quicken even more.) The Windows experience could be better in some ways, but that is in my opinion largely subjective.
I meant it light-heartedly. I happen to like working with all of Microsoft's development tools. However, I am not particularly fond of their OSs any longer (I still prefer Win2000).. I am also not very happy about the "forced upgrades" which has become well known in the industry since so many of Microsoft's products are tied directly to the OS. SQL-Server is probably one of the best databases you can invest in from an ease-of-use perspective and the price is quite reasonable. However, unless SQL-Server 2005 has more to offer in terms of scalability and reliability (as to these issues, I have never found anything wrong with SQL-Server 2000 and I still use both at work and at home...) than SQL-Server 2000, the fact that you can write stored procedures in CLR compliant languages is actually a detriment as it will prevent you from easily porting your databases to another platform if and when that may become a requirement. And I have seen this happen before. In terms of volume licensing, no matter how you go about it, it is the less expensive way to aquire a Microsoft products if you plan to distribute them throughout your organization. The only place where it doesn't provide any benefit is for the developer editions of SQL Server (SQL Server 2005 Express) and SQL-Server CE which are both free.
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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I meant it light-heartedly. I happen to like working with all of Microsoft's development tools. However, I am not particularly fond of their OSs any longer (I still prefer Win2000).. I am also not very happy about the "forced upgrades" which has become well known in the industry since so many of Microsoft's products are tied directly to the OS. SQL-Server is probably one of the best databases you can invest in from an ease-of-use perspective and the price is quite reasonable. However, unless SQL-Server 2005 has more to offer in terms of scalability and reliability (as to these issues, I have never found anything wrong with SQL-Server 2000 and I still use both at work and at home...) than SQL-Server 2000, the fact that you can write stored procedures in CLR compliant languages is actually a detriment as it will prevent you from easily porting your databases to another platform if and when that may become a requirement. And I have seen this happen before. In terms of volume licensing, no matter how you go about it, it is the less expensive way to aquire a Microsoft products if you plan to distribute them throughout your organization. The only place where it doesn't provide any benefit is for the developer editions of SQL Server (SQL Server 2005 Express) and SQL-Server CE which are both free.
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
I really have looked at SQL Server 2005 from the programming perspective. Some of the new T-SQL features like common table expressions (CTE) are really nice. However, there are also benefits that you would be interested in including: Up to 35% faster transaction processing Higher availability (and faster failover) Security enhancements (defaults to most secure, native data encryption, password policy enforcement, etc.)
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I really have looked at SQL Server 2005 from the programming perspective. Some of the new T-SQL features like common table expressions (CTE) are really nice. However, there are also benefits that you would be interested in including: Up to 35% faster transaction processing Higher availability (and faster failover) Security enhancements (defaults to most secure, native data encryption, password policy enforcement, etc.)
I wasn't aware of the specs on SQL-Server 2005 as I haven't had any time to tinker with it. However, I will get around to it when I begin producing easy to use DALs for it among other databases which I will be posting on my website. Nonetheless, As said I like SQL-Server 2000 quite a bit. And I have been working with SQL-Server since version 6.0. The only problem I have ever seen with this product had to do with concurrent thread-blocking whereby the DBA had to go in and manually delete the user access threads. However, I don't remember this being a problem once SQL-Server 7.0 hit the steets and since. SQL-Server, no matter whether it be 7.0, 2000, or 2005 is a solid product and I don't really think you can go wrong by choosing it as a primary database. The London Stock Exchange relys on SQL-Server 2005 and so does the Nasdaq among just a few. In fact, I believe if Microsoft were to release a version of SQL-Server for Linux, Solaris, and UNIX, it would seriously impede the competition. I also believe that both Oracle and DB2, though they are fine databases, are both overkill for most situations. However, if you are interested in the open-source world for a similar databse to SQL-Server you may want to review either PostgreSQL 8.2 or MySQL 5.0. Both are excellent products and have large community support with a large plethora of support tools.
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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I wasn't aware of the specs on SQL-Server 2005 as I haven't had any time to tinker with it. However, I will get around to it when I begin producing easy to use DALs for it among other databases which I will be posting on my website. Nonetheless, As said I like SQL-Server 2000 quite a bit. And I have been working with SQL-Server since version 6.0. The only problem I have ever seen with this product had to do with concurrent thread-blocking whereby the DBA had to go in and manually delete the user access threads. However, I don't remember this being a problem once SQL-Server 7.0 hit the steets and since. SQL-Server, no matter whether it be 7.0, 2000, or 2005 is a solid product and I don't really think you can go wrong by choosing it as a primary database. The London Stock Exchange relys on SQL-Server 2005 and so does the Nasdaq among just a few. In fact, I believe if Microsoft were to release a version of SQL-Server for Linux, Solaris, and UNIX, it would seriously impede the competition. I also believe that both Oracle and DB2, though they are fine databases, are both overkill for most situations. However, if you are interested in the open-source world for a similar databse to SQL-Server you may want to review either PostgreSQL 8.2 or MySQL 5.0. Both are excellent products and have large community support with a large plethora of support tools.
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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peterchen wrote:
Keep in mind that without "Software Assurance", you don't get updates for these. So for OS and Office, a "System Builder" licence is often cheaper (but has a few more restrictions).
We don't quality for an OEM system builder license. We're a tool and die shop. We don't upgrade all that often, so I don't know if software assurance would be worth it -- what kind of cost is associated with that.
(1) There are two types of "System Builder" available: one has o come with a new PC, the other not. The restrictions, as I understand, are the same: no support, and not trasnferable to another PC. (This might dependd on the country, thoug. They are advertised here as "OEM" and "System Builder" respectively) (2) Software Assurance ("SA") for MS Open Licences is available from your MS Open reseller, too. Ask him for prices. But it's I think about 1/3rd of the purchase, so rarely worth the trouble. Resellers here do all the paperwork, so its very convenient compared to the Action Pack.
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Velopers, Develprs, Developers!
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
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