Also, you don’t have to make the upgrade during the three years of your Software Assurance contract. “For example, if you have a Desktop Platform EA ending in 2011 you will have rights to Windows 7, Office 2010, and CALs [Client Access Licenses] for Windows Server 2008 R2 even if you don’t renew it. You can upgrade at any time in the future,” Forrester notes.
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Corporations often take several years to consider, plan and implement a companywide software upgrade, so the ability to upgrade after SA coverage expires is important.
“Few companies upgrade every three years as Microsoft releases new versions, but an EA removes one obstacle: the challenge of securing budget to buy a complete set of new licenses,” Forrester notes.
3. How does your company budget for and fund IT investment?
The process of securing approval for a major software upgrade can vary depending on whether a company handles all technology budgeting centrally, or spreads the decision-making process across many autonomous business units.
“Financially empowered group sourcing executives” can make decisions without worrying about politics, but companies without a centralized purchasing system may struggle to bring disparate business units to agreement on budgeting.
“One public sector procurement director told Forrester, “‘I’ll never be able to persuade the departments to put SA back in their budgets if I ever let them take it out,'” the analyst report states.
4. How much are favorable licensing rules worth to you?
Microsoft periodically adds benefits to Software Assurance (or, restricts benefits to Software Assurance, you might say) to convince customers to upgrade.
The questions is, are you willing to pay a premium for what Microsoft offers? Besides upgrade rights, Software Assurance provides access to Windows 7 Enterprise edition, the right to extend licenses to virtual desktops and application streaming instances, and enhanced ability to deploy a standard desktop image across a company’s user base.
Unfortunately, the rules regarding virtual desktop licensing are unclear, so customers need to do some legwork to get the right information, Forrester says.
While an Enterprise Agreement might “be the cheapest way to support large VDI or streamed environments, … there is a major potential gotcha, which is that employee-owned devices that employees use regularly for business purposes might count as qualifying desktops,” Forrester writes. “Microsoft might insist that you include, for example, the home PC of someone who frequently uses it to work from home. Unfortunately some Forrester clients have received erroneous advice on this point from Microsoft reps and LARs [large account resellers], so you need to be careful.”
One possible solution: Don’t buy the Enterprise Agreement, and get Software Assurance only for PCs whose primary users need access to virtual desktops.
5. Do other Software Assurance benefits sway a close decision?
If your decision is still unclear after weighing the previous four questions, there may be some less well-known Software Assurance services that might make the extra cost worth it.
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