When it comes to software licensing, most of the time we discuss what you can’t do with the licenses. Today I thought I would touch on what you CAN do with Microsoft licenses as it pertains to the SPLA program. Here’s a list of ways you can take advantage of being a Microsoft hosting partner.

• Use SPLA licenses internally. There’s a 50% rule with SPLA that states you can use 50% of what you are hosting for your internal employees. Let’s say you are hosting 10 Exchange licenses externally, the terms of the agreement states you can use up to 5 licenses internally. These licenses are not free, you would still need to report those 5 licenses on your monthly report (report a total of 15 licenses to your reseller). One way of reducing your volume licensing count.
• 60 Day Evaluation. This allows a service provider to host an application as a trial for up to 60 days per customer! The trick is you cannot receive a fee during this period.
• Customer Owned Licenses. Customers can bring their own licenses into your data center and you can host the software for them. The issue: you must host it in a physical dedicated environment (nothing shared amongst other customers).
• Install Servers on Customers Premise. As long as you own the hardware, you can locate the server at your customers location.
• Receive the latest version. As new technology is released, you will have access. (check SPUR for availability)
• Partner with another service providers to host the software. This is especially important for customers looking to deploy a Dynamics solution but are not Dynamics authorized.

It’s refreshing to write about what you can do. Microsoft is not always the bad guy!

The Softchoice team will assist you with not only your external SPLA licensing, but your internal environment as well. What questions do you have for me? Sound off below and I’ll respond as quickly as I can. Thanks for reading!

A version of this post originally appeared on Brett’s personal blog. You can visit it here.

So, Windows Server 2012 is finally here with a lot of big changes. In particular, Hyper-V has been enhanced significantly with regard to scalability.

While my role at Softchoice is on the vendor-neutral storage and backup side of things, my customers have been asking a lot about these new features and what they mean to them, and I wanted to take the time to point out two massive improvements to Hyper-V that pertain to storage.

At the Server 2012 launch, Microsoft announced two new protocols: ODX (Offload Data Xfer) and SMB 3.0 (which is the new version of the Windows file sharing protocol). These two protocols are going to be huge for our customers looking to save some money on their existing Hyper-V deployments as well as those customers looking to deploy Hyper-V for the first time.

ODX
Let’s talk about ODX first – what exactly is it? Essentially, the biggest performance problems in most virtualized environments are related to storage, so Microsoft has provided ODX for storage vendors to support. Once a storage vendor supports ODX that array becomes deeply integrated with Hyper-V. The types of offloads provided allow Hyper-V to reduce the number of commands and operations it sends to the array and drastically improves performance. These performance increases not only speed up what you’re doing today with your Hyper-V environment, but they allow you to run more virtual machines on the same hardware – resulting in big cost savings. How big? Microsoft is claiming ODX provides up to a 10x performance improvement over non-ODX devices!

A good example of ODX optimizations would be on copies. Suppose you wanted to clone a VM – in a non-ODX environment Hyper-V would issue millions of commands to the array that essentially read each block one at a time and then write them one at a time to the same array. This fills up the cache on the server, the storage and results in a ton of traffic on the network and storage busses. In an ODX environment, Hyper-V is able to issue a issue a single command to the storage array that essentially says: Read the entire VM named “Windows 2008R2 Template”.The array can then decide to read that VM in the most efficient way possible, likely taking advantage of advanced proprietary technology within the storage subsystem. This is just one example of the types of optimizations that ODX enables.

SMB 3.0
SMB 3.0 is another huge announcement. Obviously, since SMB is the Windows file sharing protocol there are big enhancements to file sharing, but I want to focus on what this means for Hyper-V. Hyper-V since its inception always had some issues with shared storage. In the first version of Hyper-V there was no shared storage, so the best practice was to have a separate LUN and drive letter for each VM.

Requiring a drive letter for every VM as a best practice wasn’t very scalable, so Microsoft introduced “Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)” in the next release. While CSVs eliminated the need for a separate drive letter for each VM, it created some problems of its own – namely around backup performance. During a backup all of the IO would have to be sent via proxy through a single Hyper-V host, this would essentially bottleneck the backup performance to that single host and additionally, that host would become the bottleneck for all VM’s being backed up. Most of my customers also complained about significant performance degradations of their production systems during Hyper-V backups. There were a few workarounds for this problem, but ultimately Microsoft has stepped up to the table and allowed for a much more simple and elegant solution.

A lot of the problems associated with Hyper-V clustering stem from the lack of a real shared (or cluster-able) file system. Microsoft has been talking about WinFS for quite some time, but it keeps getting pushed back. Ultimately, it seems that their go-forward solution for this is to modify the native Windows file sharing protocol (SMB) to allow for complex clustering such as Hyper-V and SQL today. Sounds great right? It is great, in so long as we don’t architect our entire infrastructure to have a Windows file server built out of commodity server hardware as a single point of failure for our entire Hyper-V or SQL clusters.

So, what’s the solution?
We can build yet another cluster out of Windows file servers and layer this new cluster technology (SMB) built on top of legacy Windows file server cluster technology. This adds a lot of complexity into an environment that we’ve been trying to simplify through leveraging the changes Microsoft has made to SMB. What our customers should be looking at is Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices that provide no single point of failure within their configuration, rather than deal with complex clustering and legacy Windows file services. Any NAS device you should be looking at should support the SMB 3.0 protocol as well as the ODX protocol to ensure that your solution is further future-proofed since those protocols appear to be Microsoft’s go-forward solution for cluster technologies.

This begs the question – How many of the NAS appliances that exist today support SMB 3.0, ODX and a no single point of failure hardware configuration? Stay tuned as different vendors introduce support for this important features and functionality.

It can be easy to take what we know, and assume that that is all there is to know about it. This is especially true when it comes to evaluating software, and Microsoft Office is the great example. When a new version gets released, we all wonder what they could have possibly added that makes it better than it already is. Sometimes changes are obvious, and quite often sometimes changes are subtle enough to not warrant any fanfare.

Interestingly, it’s often in these subtle improvements where productivity gains are to be found–often hidden in plain sight. Office 2013 is a perfect example of this notion, and Excel 2013 is a great place to start.

Think there’s nothing new in Excel? Read on to learn about three big improvements I think are hidden in plain sight.

Over the years, I’ve had many customers dismiss a new version of a product because they don’t use all of the existing features, or don’t plan to use them. In virtually every instance, this is due to one of two things:

1. They’ve always done it this way.

First, companies have a “process”. Many companies have a way of doing things that executes the day to day business and drives the organization forward. However, process is not absolute. Process is the marriage of circumstance and capability. If circumstances change, process change is an obvious requirement.  However, capability changes can, at times, be elusive. We can get so caught up in the execution of process that we can forget to examine what new capabilities are at our disposal.

2. The perception that what they have is good enough.

Many companies are apathetic. They have taken the perspective that the tools they are using are good enough for the task at hand. They feel that re-learning or re-training is the real villain and the status quo is more efficient in the long run.  However, people change as often as circumstance and capability.  On one hand we have long term users who need to relearn tasks, on the other hand we have folks newer to the workforce that expect efficiencies in the tools they use at home to match the tools they use in the office.

Great Tools for Great Work

In this regard we need to think about equipping our users with great tools to do great work. With Office 2013 we have some old tools with new capabilities that can bring about this productivity boost we are looking for, but sometimes we don’t know where they are or how to use them. We’ve enjoyed a long history of hidden gems in the Office world. Excel in particular has a tradition of having fun, hidden pieces of code, called Easter Eggs, in the program.

My personal favorites are the “Hall of Tortured Souls” Easter egg, hidden in Excel 95, and “Flight Simulator” hidden in Excel 97. The Excel 95 Easter egg, was an homage to the classic video game DOOM and allowed the “player” to travel through a maze until they arrive at a list of the team of developers of Excel 95. The Easter Egg in Excel 97 is a pretty well-built flight simulator that allows you travel to a pyramid looking for the developers’ names again.

These hidden nuggets were a lot of fun, but weren’t really missed because they didn’t add much value to the day of an Excel user. Fast forward to Excel 2013. Excel 2013 has some features that are sure to add value (and time!) to a user’s day. These features aren’t hidden, but are largely unknown and are worth crowing about.

If you have folks using Excel on a regular basis, you are going to love three of the new features Excel brings to the table.

1. Flash Fill

This is by far my favorite, yet subtle, improvement in Excel 2013. I regularly get reports in Excel format and find that the information in them is not tremendously useful to me. The data is there, but I need to massage or tweak it to make it work for me. This data can be a real bear to deal with, so the options are typically take a bunch of time to pull out the pieces you need OR suffer with it and comb through the irrelevant bits every time you need something. Flash Fill gives you an alternative.

In the example below, I am looking at a customer report for our wholesale (and fictitious) Juggling Supply company called Tim’s Juggling Warehouse.  The report shows me the top 3 products sold to each customer as well as the volume of the top product.

However, it doesn’t isolate the top product itself. Instead I would need to manually go in and pull that out. Flash Fill takes that pain away. Excel 2013 will read the type of data we are trying to pull and automatically fill in the blank. Simply choose a cell and begin to type the pattern of the info you would like to pull out and Flash Fill will pick up on what you are after and offer to complete the effort. In the example below, I am going to pull the top product in each cell and automatically fill it in to a new cell.

Excel 2013 determined what I was looking for out of the data and suggested to fill it.  From there I hit enter and it is filled.  Minutes just turned in to seconds. I successfully pulled out the top product by volume out of a messy list in 10 seconds. This saved a small about of time in a sheet of 7 rows, but what would it save in a sheet of 100?  1,000? 10,000?

2. Quick Analysis

We have been conditioned to ignore pop-ups and warnings since the old “You have performed an Illegal Operation” errors of a decade ago. However, in Excel 2013 it pays to pay attention. Excel 2013 will bring you Quick Analysis options upon selecting data that will allow you to choose some specific analysis you are after. Excel 2013 will even suggest charts or Sparklines that best fit the type of data you have selected. If it would communicate best as a pie chart, it will be offered.  If it’s a bar graph…bar graph.

Gone are the days of having to apply a chart then undo. Try another one. Undo. Another. Undo. Take a look at how Excel 2013 will bring your analysis options to you below. In this video I selected the cells that I wanted to analyze and Excel brought forth some Quick Analysis options for me to evaluate. I can move through these options to make fast improvements to the spreadsheet and make fast analysis of the data.

Quick Analysis will help users make better decisions because of better insight. Best of all, Quick Analysis is not great at hiding. Excel 2013 will bring the options to you!

3. BI for the Masses in Excel 2013 – introducing PowerView

The last feature I want to point out has to do with the even further investments in our need to digest data. We get a ton of it, and we need help figuring out what to do with it. In Excel 2013, Professional Plus customers can add on PowerView. PowerView is a Power-ful way of visualizing static spreadsheet data that leaves charting and trending behind, the way jet propulsion leaves behind a rowboat. By taking the business intelligence software (BI) out of the server room and putting it in the hands of our users (via Excel 2013), Microsoft feels it has created “an interactive data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience for all skill levels.” In short, BI is for everyone who needs it. Better yet, it can be executed by everyone who needs it. You don’t need an advanced degree from CalTech to figure it out!

In my “Tim’s Juggling Warehouse” example I am going to select data and choose to create a PowerView of my data.

Upon inserting, my PowerView opens up as a clean canvas for me to work on. I can drag over relevant columns or categories and analyze my data as I find it relevant to me and my job function.

Dragging Columns into the PowerView

It Slices! It Dices!

PowerView promises to bring powerful, visual, ad-hoc to the desktop in a way that is very formidable, but also, very usable. Read more about it and see more examples.

Take This Away

Excel 2013 is a fine example of how something may seem old, yet can be so new. FlashFill, Quick Analysis, and PowerView are in my opinion three very good examples. These are not updates for the sake of releasing a new product. These are reactions to the way that we are working today. Go try it out here or reach out to your friends here at Softchoice. We can get you set up!

Have any burning questions about Excel 2013? Connect with me on Twitter @mckellip, or leave a comment below and I’ll get back you as soon as I can.

It’s been 11 years since Windows XP launched, and the headlines from the day describe a totally different technology landscape. The casual office worker had no tablet and no smartphone. Social networking was largely done via IM (remember this sound?). And back then, the “cloud” was not a part of our regular vocabulary – it was just called the Internet. The notion of using these type of technologies for “real work” was a pipe dream.

Fast forward to today, and you’ll find that Microsoft has put together a “real work” solution fit for our times. Launched in January 2013, Windows 8 gives businesses of all sizes a modern technology toolkit that delivers the best possible productivity solution.

To help you sift through all the product benefits and features updates, I’ve put together a list of the features I feel will make the most difference to your organization.

	1. Windows To Go. Create a fully-functional Windows environment on a USB stick, which you can boot up from any computer.Awesome for temporary and contract workers because you can easily load the apps and tools they need to work with you from anywhere.
	2. Direct Access. Give remote users easy access to resources inside a corporate network without having to launch a separate VPN, all while keeping everything secure and compliant.
	3. The Interface. The most noticeable change, at least visibly, this OS is truly designed for the modern day worker. With the touch-focused UI and the hybrid desktop-touch approach, Windows 8 gives workers a fresh, faster way to get work done.
	4. Faster Boot Up. Get up and going in around eight seconds, thanks to a new boot solution called Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), which will kill once and for all painfully-long boot times.
	5. Better Networking. Get support for several new network authentication types. For example, WISPr (Wireless Internet Services Provider roaming) protocol allows users to fluidly roam between Wi-Fi hotspots. (See 12 networking features of the OS here.)
	6. App Deployment. Eliminate the hassles of business app deployments with Microsoft’s take on the app store distribution model. Makes delivering enterprise apps, on the fly, far more efficient and simple.
	7. App Locker. Mitigate issues by specifying which users or groups can run particular applications in your organization based on unique identities of files.
	8. Up to speed. Leverage all the security and efficiency improvements that are included in Windows 8, like Secured Boot, Windows Defender and SmartScreen.

There are a lot of compelling reasons why organizations will benefit from a modern Windows 8 operating system. Yet more than two thirds of business machines are still running XP, an OS that will actually cease to be supported in less than 18 months, according to a Softchoice study.

While migrations can certainly be a pain, it’s important to start planning your migrations now before it’s too late. Fortunately, Softchoice can help. We have a team of experts ready to help you understand your options and uncover opportunities to efficiently roll out a migration plan.

Leave your questions or comments below, and someone from our team will answer you as soon as they can.

Microsoft is making some licensing changes to address an evolving IT landscape. There are now more devices and means for workers to get their job done than ever – from using iPads on the road, to carrying a desktop in your pocket  – and it’s making the complicated world of Microsoft licensing even more complicated.

Which is why Microsoft has drawn a line in the sand with a recent update to the  definition of what devices you need to pay for in your volume licensing agreement. Until now, it’s never been crystal clear how to handle the machines that had become a daily part of their IT environment, such as tablets and smartphones, from home or the office.

With the update, Microsoft is now giving us a solid answer – and it may have significant impacts on your licensing costs.

What’s Microsoft saying? 

In a nutshell, if a device is part of IT’s oversight, and it’s being used to get work done with the help of Microsoft technologies, you most likely will need to license the device – with a few exceptions (more on those, below). The key takeaway here is that, while the news may make your licensing requirements more evident, you may end up having to spend more on devices.

The updated definition specifically clarifies what a “Qualified Device” is and what “managing a device” means. Many devices, such as smartphones and tablets, were previously excluded from the definition because they had an “embedded operating system”. But the new definition is now revised to exclude only devices that are not “capable of running an instance of the Windows Professional operating system locally (in a physical or virtual operating system environment.”

To avoid leaving anything out, here’s the new definition verbatim:

“Qualified Device” means any device that is used by or for the benefit of Enrolled Affiliate’s Enterprise and is: (1) a personal desktop computer, portable computer, workstation, or similar device capable of running an instance of Windows Professional locally (in a physical or virtual operating system environment) or (2) a device used to access a virtual desktop infrastructure (“VDI”). Qualified Devices do not include any device that is: (1) designated as a server and not used as a personal computer, (2) an Industry Device, or (3) not managed (as defined in the Product List at the start of the applicable initial or renewal term of the Enrollment) as part of Enrolled Affiliate’s Enterprise. At its option, the Enrolled Affiliate may designate any device that is used by or for the benefit of the Enrolled Affiliate’s Enterprise (e.g., Industry Device) as a Qualified Device for all or a subset of Enterprise Products or Online Services the Enrolled Affiliate has selected.

Exclusions

Equally important is what does not qualify as a device. There are three major exclusions to Qualified Devices: Servers, Industry Devices, and “non-managed” devices. If a device falls under those categories it is excluded from the agreement. In particular, non-managed devices is where organizations will find the most changes.

• Industry Devices: Basically a “line of business” device used solely for a business function, for example a point of sale device.
• Server: Very straight forward. Any device running a server operating system and used solely as a server.
• Non-Managed Devices: This exclusion ensures devices IT does not have oversight on are generally excluded from the agreement. Simply put, if IT doesn’t manage the device AND the device is not able to access a virtual desktop, you don’t count it.

Questions and Getting help

One major thing customers are asking us is whether the new definition will impact pre-existing enrollments. The answer is “no.” The definition applies only to enrollments signed after October 1, 2012. But it can be used as a guide by anyone to help determine which devices may be included.

Microsoft has produced a helpful PDF which goes into depth about non-managed devices and other FAQ’s. Take a look to get a detailed understanding of the changes.

Still have some questions about this stuff? Microsoft licensing changes can be pretty tough to wrap your head around sometimes – especially when you want to know how it affects your bottom line.

This post only scratches the surface of what this change may mean to you. Softchoice is a certified licensing expert, and we are one of the largest Microsoft licensing partners in North America. Get in touch with one of our consultants today to get useful advice and to determine your best options.

Toyota recently announced plans to deploy a cutting-edge, unified Microsoft communications and collaboration solution – one that includes voice, IM, video and productivity – to nearly a quarter million of its employees.

The Japan-based automaker, which holds offices worldwide, unveiled its plans to deploy the full Microsoft collaboration suite to 200,000 global employees on October 1st, 2012. While this may be big news for Toyota, the move further illustrates the “enterprise-class quality and scalability” of the platform, said Microsoft’s chief operating officer Kevin Turner in a press release.

This major announcement is a signal to IT leadership that it’s time to take a closer look at Microsoft’s full unified collaboration and communications offering.Although the company is better known in the unified communication (UC) space for its IM and presence technology, announcements like Toyota’s serve to underline just how far the company has come with the rest of its UC offering. Microsoft’s Lync brings together all the components of a genuine UC platform, allowing users to keep track of their contacts’ availability, send an IM, start or join an audio, video or web conference or make a phone call – all through a consistent, familiar interface.

One doesn’t have to look far to find other high-profile deployments of Lync in the enterprise. From oil companies in Indonesia, massive construction companies in Germany, and elite universities across the United States, Microsoft has dozens of major Lync case studies, all involving thousands of users and mission critical infrastructure.

While Lync’s enterprise voice offering combines the telephony of a traditional IP PBX with the familiar IM and conferencing solutions, IT departments still often face challenges in adopting the Microsoft voice solution, in favor of other competing offerings.

The reason for the challenge may be more cultural than a performance or technological issue. Lync, for example, is a Microsoft product and, as such, doesn’t traditionally reside in the same area of IT that telephony does. Telephony may live in any number of different areas these days because of the different types of approaches VoIP may take. As a result, internal collaboration and consensus is challenging if this isn’t addressed ahead of time.

There are several benefits to Lync’s UC solution that increasingly make it an optimal choice.

Perhaps the most appealing feature of Lync is its extensibility, which is the ability for internal developers to customize the solution to better serve the needs of the organization. From plug and play, no-coding required, embedding of Lync into business-critical applications, to an easy and familiar framework (.NET) allowing customers to make their own user experience, this flexibility can have significant benefits to both users and the bottom line.

Whatever your roadmap or current technological needs are, Softchoice has the agnostic, assessment-led services to help you make the best decision when it comes to unified collaboration technologies.

According to Forester Research there will be 63 million telecommuters in the US by 2016 or 43% of the workforce. It seems everyone wants to be able to work anywhere, anytime and on any device.

Every organization debates the best way to connect its people, process and technology. There are certainly lots of options and it’s easy to end up with multiple systems to meet different users’ needs, with all the support and administrative headaches that entails.

At Softchoice, we’ve seen first hand the impact of this trend, and how these new user expectations affect businesses, including:

1. Workforce Distribution – With greater flexibility in staffing strategies, more organizations have a mobile workforce with a greater need for efficient collaborative technologies.
2. Technology Integration – Inefficiencies between platforms and systems drives a demand to simplify
3. BYOD – Bring Your Own Device introduces choice to the end user, but challenges business to find ways to reduce costs while improving productivity and efficiencies.

One solution we’ve found that answers our business and operational needs is Microsoft Lync. It offers a unified productivity and communications suite that aligns all the tools users need on a daily basis, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and SharePoint with great collaborative tools like IM, voicemail, presence and video-conferencing. It also provides a huge benefit to IT as administration becomes centralized, resulting in an easier support framework and a more consistent IT strategy for maintaining the business.

Define the problem, find the solution

Microsoft’s collaboration vision sounds great, but how do you actually transition your existing platform to the nirvana that tools like Lync promise? According to Softchoice Senior Consultant Peter Baxter ( peter.baxter@softchoice.com), the first step is to capture and identify your business requirements and priorities for the business. Introducing a new solution to an organization can be challenging, so Baxter stresses focusing on two key areas first:

Business: What goals does the business have? Each organization is different and will have different needs from enhancing productivity, to improving usability for internal users, to boosting customer satisfaction through improved communications.

Operations: Does the operations area have a good understanding of the existing infrastructure limitations? What are the gaps that exist between what the business wants and what the operation can support? How will a Lync implementation change how IT manages the infrastructure, what are the benefits and what are the costs?

Once you have a clear understanding of both business and operational expectations, Baxter recommends considering 4 key factors to ensure your Lync deployment success.

4 key factors for Lync deployment success

1. Do you have Executive Sponsorship? If the group responsible for business strategy, objectives and goals is not participating, the project won’t proceed successfully.
2. Business and IT alignment? Determine your critical daily workflows, so functions and features of Lync can be matched to workflow requirements.
3. How will you handle adoption and change management? Ask key stakeholders to contribute their perspectives and include them in the decision making process. Demonstrating Lync functionality to staff allows them to see the link between the issues in their day-to-day business processes and how the technology will assist them in their jobs, ensuring faster, more compliant adoption later.
4. How will you manage rollout? You can prioritize the rollout of features, addressing the most critical needs first and adding in other features later. He suggests a big bang may sound good in theory but rarely is as successful as an additive build.

One of the best ways to determine whether a Lync deployment is right for your organization is to see it in action. That’s why we created the Microsoft Lync Proof of Concept offering to evaluate the platform and capture business requirements. If you’d like to be part of this trial offer, please feel free to contact us at Microsoft@softchoice.com.

Now that you have your business and operational requirements, it’s time to consider the technical aspects, Dino Caputo, Softchoice’s Senior Microsoft Lync Consultant suggests that customers consider all the features of Lync before starting their deployment. It’s crucial to establish an integration plan first. “We often recommend customers work through our UC Roadmap Service when considering a Lync deployment, to clarify some of the complex integration issues they need to address. The roadmap helps define an existing environment, establish functional requirements, and provides solution options to help in the decision making process”, says Caputo.

Lync Topology Basics

Four key areas that Caputo emphasizes with customers considering Lync are:

1. Which Topology should you choose? Standard Edition is great for deployments for less than 5000 users where HA/DR are not a requirement. Choose Enterprise Edition when you need greater scale and/or require HA/DR.
2. Is this a Lync deployment for IM and presence only or will you add Voice? Lync Voice has many planning requirements to address.
3. Are you considering Exchange Server to handle your voicemail requirements? If so, ensure you plan appropriately for Exchange to handle this.
4. Do you want to extend Lync functionality outside your corporate network Ie. provide for remote workers, trusted partners and customers to collaborate using Lync? This will require further planning.

As with most technology, Microsoft Lync has been evolving rapidly and Cloud and hybrid Cloud options have been added to the mix. Recently announced Lync Server 2013, builds on the architecture of earlier versions, enhancing and adding to the feature set to address the needs of an increasingly demanding and mobile workforce.

While any new IT system presents challenges, the need to manage both business and users collaboration expectations isn’t going away any time soon. Finding the right solution and implementing it properly is key to driving improved productivity and communications within your organization. And the best way to do that is to put in place effective planning and procedures, and work with an experienced partner that has the expertise to understand the complexities of Microsoft Lync and the insight and knowledge to facilitate a smooth transition.

Do you have Microsoft Software Assurance Benefits (SABs)?

Microsoft contractual agreements (e.g. Enterprise & Select Agreements) offer significant benefits outside the “normal” License and Maintenance associated with software. These Software Assurance Benefits are rewards for committing to Microsoft technology and solutions. Most customers view this as an incentive program for technology – much like a credit card rewards program.

The nature of the benefits earned are determined by the program and products selected; new software version rights, 24×7 phone and web support, training and planning services give you access to services and technologies that will help your organization stay current, proactive and productive.

Typically, customers conceptualize the value of these benefits easily, yet still run into challenges utilizing them. A discussion with a Softchoice Software Assurance Benefits Specialist helps you address those challenges. What follows is how we start the conversation.

Planning Services Vouchers = Plan For Change

Deciding the deployment path for new software can be demanding. Planning Services vouchers (PSV) are designed to support the introduction of new software assets into your enterprise; alleviating some of the costs of evaluating the impact of these technologies and removing barriers to adoption. Softchoice’s Solution Architects are tenured experts and will work with you to develop custom and innovative strategies for your environment.

SATVs = Free Microsoft Expertise and Instruction

One of the key SA Benefits people struggle to fully realize are Software Assurance Training Vouchers (or SATVs). SATVs are typically earned in parallel with the amount of Microsoft technology a customer purchases and can be used to provide classroom, virtual or on-site training towards Microsoft skills and certifications.  They are a  fantastic benefit with true, hard costs associated with them, but, can be challenging for some customers to fully utilize.

A key influencer for the success of your IT environment is the skill of the team managing the infrastructure. Introducing technology and solutions will require training for your team. SATVs are equal to one day of training and will give you access to authorized Microsoft curriculum with in-depth, hands-on courses that are designed to help your IT staff deploy, manage and support your most critical infrastructure. Instructor led training will go beyond the core curriculum to teach students what online courses or manuals do not always address. SATVs are a step towards earning MCSA and MCSE certifications.

How can I use SATVs?

A Microsoft Learning Partner is authorized to take your SATVs in exchange for Official Microsoft Learning Product (OMLP) classes. The difference is real world experience – real-life practice which accelerates your skill-building and experience for achieving Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) and Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE). Softchoice can provide guidance towards your training path.

Have you used up all your SATVs?

No problem – we have access to a comprehensive IT and business training portfolio with more than 1,200 courses from leading technology vendors such as Microsoft as well as Cisco, VMware, Citrix, Red Hat; as well as ITIL, Six Sigma, Project Management and vendor-neutral technology training.

What are the risks in leaving vouchers on the table?

Lack of training contributes towards a reactive rather than a proactive IT team. Current IT infrastructure and skills enable your organization to drive productivity, enhance efficiency, and cut costs, while making individuals more valuable in today’s economic climate. The opportunity for professional growth and development will improve employee morale and retention.

For more information about using your Software Assurance Benefits – contact your Softchoice Account Manager or if you don’t have an Account Manager, feel free to contact me.

Microsoft has just revealed pricing changes for Office 2013. We wanted to get a couple of those top changes specifically around pricing, licensing and features, communicated to you as soon as possible.

The pricing changes are set to go live starting December 1st, 2012. To help with our communication plan, Softchoice will be hosting a webinar (same content, three different times) on the 14th, 15th and 16th of November, 2012. You can register here.

Below is just a brief outline of the changes we will be covering in the webinars as well as additional post here at Microsoft Navigator. We’ll be updating this post regularly as information gets released by Microsoft, and our team has had a chance to pull out the relevant bits for you.

Pricing Changes (updated 11/09/12):

Licensing Changes:

• Office 365 to be available through the Microsoft Open Licensing Program (previously announced)
• Mobile Office

Feature Changes:

• Lync Hybrid (On Prem and cloud) deployment in one Lync Server
• Project and Visio available through Microsoft Cloud Platform (Office 365)
• SkyDrive Pro
• Skype Federation
• eDiscovery
• DLP in Exchange Online
• Multi-view

REMINDER! Per User CALs are still going up by 15% in December as well. If you are looking at any agreements that include Per User CALs, you immediately save 15% on those CALs if you are able to purchase in November.

I once had a sales leader say to me “where there is change, there is opportunity.” What we”ve found regarding SQL 2012 is there is a lot of confusion around virtualization, how this will affect the datacenter environment, and ultimately how will this affect costs. At the same time, it might mean opportunity!

I wrote in a previous blog post about SQL 2012 in a general sense, and today I would like to review my two reasons on why switching to SQL Enterprise 2012 may be a good move.

1. SQL Enterprise  2012 allows unlimited virtualization
2. SQL Enterprise 2012 allows license mobility

Those two things alone “might” be a reason to switch. With unlimited virtualization, you can license every physical core (minimum 4 cores per processor) on the host machine that allow you to spin up as many virtual instances of SQL on that host machine. This is a good move considering the cost of SQL Datacenter 2008R2 was outrageous. The issue now is SQL 2012 is licensed by the core not by the physical processor. For those service providers that built very robust servers with multiple cores this may be a price increase. (Thus, the “might” part in my explanation above in reasons to switch.)

So now that you have unlimited virtualization, what happens if those virtual instances (VM’s) can move from host to host or even across data centers?Theoretically you would need to license those physical hosts right?

To quote ESPN’s Lee Corso… “Not so fast my friend.”

Now you should consider License Mobility within server farms. From the SPUR (Service Provider Use Rights) “You may reassign licenses to any of your servers located within the same server farm as often as needed”

The trick is you have to license the physical hosts with the most cores in order to be covered. In other words, you cannot have 1 host with 4 cores and another host with 16 cores and expect the VM to move around with only licensing the one with 4 cores. You would need to license the host machine with 16 cores in order to be compliant. The other trick is the servers have to be located within the same server farm. To quote the October 2012 SPUR page 29 –

A server farm consists of up to two data centers each physically located:

•  In a time zone that is within four hours of the local time zone of the other (Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and not DST), and/or
• Within the European Union (EU) and/or European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

Each data center may be part of only one server farm. You may reassign a data center from one server farm to another, but not on a short-term basis (i.e., not within 30 days of the last assignment).

One other minor thing to consider: you will be “forced” to transition to 2012 when your enrollment expires. If you sign a new SPLA after December 2012, you will have to license SQL 2012 regardless if you are running SQL 7 (does that still exist) 2005, 2008 or 2008R2. Talk to your Softchoice account manager to see when your agreement expires and best options available. I will also host quarterly licensing briefs outlining best practices, SQL, and Windows 2012 in December.

Reach out to your Softchoice account manager or with me directly on twitter for the latest updates.