Category: MS Licensing

See, I’m not the only one ranting about Microsoft licensing. Susan’s baffled, too.

So I’m downloading the latest Microsoft Business and Technical Assessment Toolkit, which is a free tool for Microsoft Partners like me, and for some reason I pause to read the license terms. They include the following passages: 1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. You may install and use any number of copies of the software on [...]

If you don’t know what the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription is, you probably won’t care about this blog post and you can stop reading now. If you do know what MAPS is, you might be interested in the following e-mail that I just sent to several managers at Microsoft: I am writing to express my objections [...]

Microsoft is trying hard to compete in the CRM (contact/customer relationship management) market. Its entry-level product, designed to compete with software such as ACT! and GoldMine, is the Business Contact Manager add-on for Outlook. I’ll probably have more to say about the actual features and benefits of this software later. This post serves only to [...]

In July 2006, Microsoft hosted the Worldwide Partner Conference a few miles down the Mass Pike from my house. Naturally, I had to attend. While there, I took advantage of my proximity to all those Microsoft managers and handed out several dozen copies of the attached memo, which I wrote during the conference. Nothing has [...]

Here’s another example of a messed-up Microsoft licensing policy — this time from Gartner Research. They applaud Microsoft for making some important IT management tools available through Software Assurance but gripe about the onerous purchase requirements.

I have so many gripes about Microsoft licensing programs that I have created a special category in The Schlog for posts on this subject. Here’s the latest: When does Microsoft Software Assurance NOT include version upgrades? I don’t know what the rule is, but it seems to have happened to me. One of my clients had [...]