Also
It exerts greater pressure on those with stretched budgets to look elsewhere.
New wording in Microsoft’s enterprise licensing agreements could see customers forced to pay more to Redmond while simultaneously jumping through new licensing hoops. Microsoft has re-worked the fine print of the Enterprise Agreement (EA) in a way that confers greater power on its licensing agents to interpret the rules. It …
...And have a manager from one of your user departments strategically "interrupt" the negotiation meeting to say "I just wanted to pop in and tell you that I was wrong when I told you that I was concerned about you putting our desktops on Linux. They've just been rock-solid since we started the trial deployment."
Then he can turn to the MS/reseller rep and say "Hi, I'm Roy. I haven't seen you around here before. Are you new?"
(Tough choice between Tux and spawn of Satan icon on this one)
They should create a tool that an enterprise can install onto each client and server that keeps track of all this data. Why should enterprises be forced to seek out and combine multiple third party tools to accomplish this? Apparently they've been taking lessons from Oracle in how to add more and more requirements onto their customers, while simultaneously making it more and more difficult to verify compliance.
They pretty much do - take a look at VAMT 3.1. Wouldn't take much to get regular "discover" runs scheduled daily and generate diff reports/max usage stats. Bet MS would even be happy to phone home with all the data. Just imagine all the fun you could have waiting for the surprise invoice to show up each month!
They should create a tool that an enterprise can install onto each client and server that keeps track of all this data.
What? And have an extra licence to worry about?
No, it's much easier and cheaper to employ a small team to sort it out.
Yeah. The tool is called System Center Software Asset Manager. Didn't cha know that Microsoft has always sought a way to get more sales of this System Center abomination? Now they have found a way.
I only have three words in this context:
"Ernie" "Ball" "Corporation".
OK, so apparently the NHS is in crisis. I expect ALL normal employees run MS stuff on their desktops.
Most (90%?) just need bog standard e-mail and document processing of some sort.
How much does MS cost NHS (and Governments)?
I bet a few 100,000 odd work stations could run a GNU/Linux platform with no licence fees and save a few hundred million quid that could be funnelled to help patients.
...which isn't necessarily what they want.
Someone takes a work-issued laptop home? That changes the number of licenses on site; notify Microsoft. They bring it back? Notify them again. A device turns off? Arguably, that changes the number of licenses, so notify Microsoft again; same when it turns on. Shouldn't take too long before Microsoft decides to clarify what they mean by "any changes".
and don't forget to change your network to use Windows DHCP with a 1m lease, reporting every change. Well, if they can be petty .....
(Seriously, wtf were they ever doing claiming stuff was using Windows Server simply by getting an IP address from it? Don't know if that ridiculousness is still true but ffs ... )
I misread this: "Microsoft’s True Up" as this... "Microsoft's Tits Up". Sadly, that was a misread.
If you're looking for an answer on who's leading the conspiracy or looking to see if Linux is the answer, I can't help you. But I can tell you that for all your questions, the correct answer will never be "Microsoft".
Don't underestimate the capacity of medium and large enterprises to withstand abuse from Microsoft.
Oh, and for your information Microsoft is fully aware of that. I bet that even if they rise the licensing costs with 100% less than 1% of enterprises would react.
If some other critical business resource was subject to subjective interpretation and intrusive and threatening conditions, auditors would flag the issue as a business risk that needed addressing. Astonishing that MS software in particular, or any other FAST affiliate, avoids this.
Do you think if MS were doing really well, or if there was any competition, they would load up the customer with new, onerous measures?
If everyone has inventory & management tools, I'd be rolling out some floss Office software onto every desktop, even if it wasn't given the file associations. It would be worth the disk-space to have it rolled out, just for MS-license negotiation time. You don't need to go the whole way with a linux migration, just threaten to slaughter the Office cash-cow. Pair it with google mail and calendars and
Its one reason I use linux at home - the proprietary stuff is just too hard and its too expensive. I've got six physical desktops/laptops and servers. I couldn't afford to be an honest MS customer and quite frankly, I don't have the time or the inclination to manage it. Give me back the days of "you may have one execution of this software at a time per license, on any hardware."
The only reason we still use a lot of Microsoft software is because they give education very cheap licensing, the price businesses have to pay is eye watering, add on top the OS refresh cycles Microsoft push businesses through when all they want is for the applications to run i don't know why more have not moved away. Im guessing they must all be running excel spreadsheets covered in VB code or custom IE6 dependent applications.
Also, it means users will be forced to begin implementing near continuous monitoring of device and license use, an administrative headache.
We already do this, we got sick and tired of Finance having a go at IT on the one hand and Managers asking for software to be installed "because we have a project for the CEO'
So with SCCM we run a bi-monthly report on installed M$ apps - luckily we only have 125 users or thereabouts - and a copy is sent to each department manager and the CEO.
We got the CEO on board because we scared the life out of him, with this little quote from the BSA:
"Fines up to $467,500 and/or up to five years imprisonment for companies."
The wording used to be five years imprisonment for directors. It's been a huge win for us, we regularly had managers requesting M$ Project, which is probably their most expensive Office application, we went from 60 installs down to 12.