Say I purchase 50 licenses for Office 2010 for my corporate network at an attractive bulk price from a proper vendor…
How am I meant to install the software in order to be properly compliant?
My expectation is that the vendor will give me a volume license key, and I’ll have to buy one complete package in order to get the installation media. I’ll copy the files over to a network share, and install on all workstations over the network, and enter the volume license key for each.
I know that I can use unattended installation, etc… I guess my question is twofold: [ol][li]Is my assumption that I need to purchase one complete package at the outset correct, and Is this going to satisfy Microsoft?[/ol][/li]
Anticipating a natural question: I’m not asking my rep these questions because his initial quote for 50 seats was ~$60,000, and when I explained that this was way more than I was expecting, he came back and quoted me about half what I was expecting. I am a VLK noob and my impression is that the rep doesn’t really know any more than I do. I am confident that there’s someone smarter than both of us here, though.
It depends on what option your rep is selling you. For example, according to this, the media has to be acquired separately (called ‘product fulfillment’) if you choose the ‘open license’ option, but is included in the purchase if you go with ‘open value’ or ‘open value subscription’. In any case, for volume customers, the media can always be ordered from authorized dealers for just the cost of the DVD and S&H.
Yeah, it doesn’t sound like your rep knows anything. 50 seats at $60000 means $1200 per pop. That’s even more expensive than paying full retail!
For 50 copies, I would look into using the Key Management Service. You give it your license key and the KMS host runs on one of your servers. The workstations connect to it and get their activation data instead of connecting directly to Microsoft.
We sell MS Office to our customers, and I’d love to have customers that paid $60,000 for 50 copies! Mostly we sell monthly licenses (SPLA), which work out to about 1/24th of the retail cost per month, but it has the advantage of being flexible (if you only need 48 copies one month, and 51 the next, you pay only for what you need). In those cases, we provide the media and license keys to the customer, although we’re often doing the roll-out as well. The unattended installation capabilities you mention can be used to set everyone up with the correct keys and registration without requiring the end-user to do anything.
For simple volume purchases of licenses, we usually provide the media version for free. I don’t do the pricing myself, but I do approve and sign the deals; even $30,000 seems high to me for 50 copies. That’s pretty close to retail price. If you’re going to pay that, they better be doing the install and providing roll-out support as part of the bargain.
It’s hard to get support for Open Office in a business setting–especially now that it is being dropped for Libre Office. I’ve been told on this very board that Microsoft Office can actually be cheaper, though maybe not at $1200 a pop.
Sorry for forgetting to return to this thread yesterday; it got a bit nuts.
Got a call from MS saying we’re scheduled for compliance testing. Seems that making inquiries about licensing can trigger an audit. Makes sense from Microsoft’s point of view, I suppose - but it seems a bit mean-spirited. “This may be our last chance to ding you for non-compliance!”
Thanks for your helpful answers. Searching for “installation media” and “volume licensing” didn’t work out at all. “Product fulfiillment.” Sheesh.
kahlereese, I would have everyone on OpenOffice in a heartbeat if it would work for us, but our database solution is integrated with the Office suite.
I think you can get support if you buy Oracle Open Office, which succeeds StarOffice.
And about 12-13 years ago, I needed to purchase about twenty Office licenses and found that the cheapest way to do so was to buy full licenses for Microsoft Works and then to purchase Office Upgrade licenses.