Facing Microsoft Licensing Decisions? Bridge The Gap Between Operations And Sourcing

Whether or not to sign or renew an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft is a sticky question that many organizations face. For many companies out there, their spend on Microsoft licensing can be a significant portion of a company's IT budget, whether it be Enterprise Agreements or Select License agreements. Some of you may be directly responsible for the negotiation of the agreement, but many more of you work with your sourcing professionals who negotiate the agreements with Microsoft or resellers. The increasing complexity around Microsoft licensing decisions require more heads at the table. For Infrastructure and Operations pros, your voice is critical in the decision process. Certainly, your current state of Microsoft products and your future rollouts over the life of the agreement (and beyond) play a role, but there are other factors to consider. Some of the other key questions you’ll face include:

How does Software Assurance impacts your current and future environment? When Software Assurance (SA) first came to be in the earlier part of the decade, it was all about upgrade rights -- Microsoft did away with upgrade licenses and moved to an annual maintenance system to increase the predictability of their revenue. Over the years, in order to coax customers to make the investment in SA, they layered on other incentives like proactive support offerings including Packaged Services and rights to licenses for cold backup servers in disaster recovery scenarios. Some of the benefits are more valuable to some than others, and they’re worthless unless you consume them.

More recently, IT Pros now have to consider how Microsoft ties SA to certain versions of products like Vista or Windows 7 Enterprise, certain product offerings like Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), and factors impacting the rights associated with certain products and the flexibility in which you deploy them. Desktop virtualization is one example -- SA is a requirement in certain scenarios, like if you want to use a standard PC rather than a thin client terminal to access a centrally hosted virtualized desktop.

How does virtualization play a role in your environment? Whether it's server, desktop, or application virtualization, they all play a role in your Microsoft licensing. One common oversight is, "I’m using VMware or Citrix instead, so there's really no impact on my Microsoft licenses." A lot of the policies are virtualization vendor agnostic -- meaning the Microsoft licensing requirements are the same regardless of the vendor used for virtualization. For instance, depending on the number of virtual machines running Windows Server on a VMware ESX server, you can save big money by purchasing Windows Server Enterprise or Datacenter licenses, which carry rights to run multiple Windows Server instances on a single server.

Are there clouds on your horizon? More and more companies are taking a harder look at the cost and complexity of running services like email themselves and looking at cloud-based alternatives from Google, IBM, and Microsoft to see if there's a fit. One of the tensions here is how your existing licensing investments play a role, should you decide to take advantage of Microsoft's online services, like Exchange Online. Again, whether or not you have SA on certain licenses impacts your cloud licensing options. For instance, customers with Enterprise Agreements can purchase certain cheaper subscription licenses. Another point that's worth noting is your spend on Online Services does not count for the accumulation of Software Assurance benefits, like Packaged Service offerings.

In order to find the best-fit strategy for your organization, you need to bridge the gap between IT sourcing and IT operations. Together, you can lay out your requirements and options, so those responsible for negotiating the agreement can better understand the positions they take in the negotiation process. The result? A strategy that saves money, meets the immediate and future needs of your company, and helps avoid unexpected charges down the road that could have been prevented with careful coordination upfront.

By Christopher Voce

Check out Christopher's research.

Microsoft Parties Like It’s 2007

Microsoft celebrates the launch of the latest Windows Server, SQL Server, and Visual Studio products with a global release party. The events are intended to showcase the underappreciated IT professional with their, “Heroes Happen Here” campaign. A nice touch for IT pros, whose work often doesn’t get any attention until something breaks.

Windows Server 2008 brings enhancements in security, manageability, and improved web platform in IIS. The virtualization solution, Hyper-V will likely emerge as the biggest draw in the OS. As of now, it’s still a beta and Microsoft promises to deliver the final version within 180 days of Windows Server 2008’s release. 

One of Microsoft’s biggest challenges lies in persuading firms to buy in to their server virtualization strategy. VMware has tremendous mind- and market-share, along with a superior feature set. A major gating factor for potential buyers is the investment level necessary to begin working toward a Microsoft-based virtualization solution. Resiliency features like Quick Migration are tied to clustering, a feature found only in the more expensive Enterprise and Datacenter licenses. A majority of firms’ Windows Server population is Standard edition, leaving Microsoft’s virtualization management product, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, available only if customers license the entire System Center suite. Plus, the latter is a bundle only available if a customer covers it with Software Assurance. Microsoft has a compelling story to tell in their holistic view of managing physical and virtual infrastructure, but it wouldn’t hurt to ease up on some of the barriers to help lure VMware customers to consider Hyper-V. 

Microsoft’s emphasis on server “roles” gives firms the opportunity to deploy Windows Server 2008 incrementally to take advantage of improved features like the new Terminal Services and IIS 7 without making large scale OS upgrades across their datacenter. Microsoft is going to great lengths to chip away at the “we’ll wait for SP1” mentality and accelerate customer adoption with an improved logo program and readiness tools. These are a start, but the proof will be in the early adopters’ experience and early feedback before firms start to reconsider their cautious ways.

By Chris Voce

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Trends Shaping Active Directory Management In 2008 And Beyond

Recently, Forrester picked apart and compared the Active Directory management offerings from the largest players in the space. This is a market that continues to grow and where players are jockeying for position, making strategic acquisitions, and refocusing their solutions. Symantec doubled down on auditing and compliance by rolling their BindView solutions into their broader suite. Quest Software acquired ScriptLogic – a move that certainly helps them better target the mid market. Beyond all of that, we see a few factors and trends that will shape this space in 2008 and further down the road like: 

• PowerShell’s growing importance. Perhaps a dry topic to some, Microsoft’s PowerShell will start to take a much more critical role in the way IT organizations manage their Microsoft infrastructure. The scripting language will gain more traction as products like Windows Server 2008 are released with it included. As administrators begin to automate and tie together their management process with PowerShell, vendors will have to continue to adapt their solutions to work with – and leverage this powerful scripting language.

• SharePoint’s swelling adoption. Its adoption in the enterprise can be best described as viral and IT organizations are faced with managing and streamlining SharePoint’s deployment and use. As firms begin to rely more on SharePoint to create and share information, they’ll face the same challenges that they do in the rest of their Active Directory and Exchange environments in managing and demonstrating what data their users -- and administrators – have access to and can change. Organizations will require the same sophistication for SharePoint in management, recovery, auditing and reporting tools that they have for their rest of their network.  

• Blurring infrastructure boundaries. Outsourcing, hosting, and services in the cloud are top of mind at many firms as they look for the most cost-effective way at delivering services, like Exchange, to their users. But along with the promise of leaner budgets will come new challenges as firms will need to integrate and rationalize their employees’ use of services with their existing management systems. Whether the service lives inside their datacenter or in a provider’s, enterprises will need help tying the use of these systems into their auditing, reporting, and management systems.

It’s going to be an interesting year with a lot of balls in the air to watch. Have a fun and safe New Year!

By Christopher Voce

Check out Christopher's research.

Microsoft Makes A Bigger Step Into DR With Exchange Server SP1

Microsoft recently released the final version of Exchange Server 2007 SP1, bringing many features into production that didn’t make the cut for the original RTM. Some of the more notable enhancements include improvements to Outlook Web Access (OWA) and the management console and native IPv6 support. Arguably the most significant addition is Standby Continuous Replication (SCR). SCR enables organizations to replicate storage groups to stand-by servers or clusters at remote or secondary data centers. The SCR target can be manually activated if there is a failure at the primary data center. Existing disaster recovery (DR) solutions using native Microsoft tools were scarce and complex, especially compared to other platforms like Domino. To date, third parties like Symantec, NetApp, and Mimosa Systems have filled the gap for customers looking for true rapid failover in site-level failures, but some companies like to see more native options. SCR could be an interesting alternative for firms looking to balance cost and their recovery SLA's. It will be interesting to see how quickly firms integrate this into their DR planning and what kind of issues or limitations, if any, they come across.

High availability (HA) and DR options in Exchange are rapidly evolving and shifting the reliance on expensive storage hardware for resiliency up into the application. Windows Server 2008 brings significant improvements to clustering that will make it simpler to deploy and increase its flexibility and effectiveness in creating greater separation between sites, having a direct impact on HA and DR planning. Server virtualization’s benefits in Exchange environments are still being explored as to how it can best compliment or enhance the resiliency of the different Exchange server roles. The addition of SCR is a great step for Microsoft in adding native site resiliency for the Exchange message stores, but firms still must look at contingency planning for all of the ways their users rely on email, whether that be mobile devices, OWA, or other business applications that leverage Exchange. If any of these are unavailable, Exchange is still “down”.

By Chris Voce

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Microsoft Backs Off Hard-Line Activation Techniques

The element of piracy always presents Microsoft with a difficult choice in how best to protect its intellectual property. Measures that are too lax could contribute to an uptake in unlicensed deployments and lost licensing revenue while more draconian techniques could threaten adoption of their products and place an unnecessary management burden on their paying customers. The software giant always has a formidable task in finding a balance between the two extremes and determining the best course of action with regard to protecting their products. Take the example of a university with a compromised Windows Server volume license key, posted by a student administrator on to the Internet for “sharing.” Installations using the key pop up around the globe, forcing Microsoft to invalidate the key. Software pirates around the globe shrug their shoulders and move on to the next key on their list while the university is stuck cleaning up the mess resulting from having a now invalid key.

Microsoft made the right choice in striking reduced functionality mode (RFM) from its final release and replacing it with more passive reminders. Whether or not it was warranted, the threat of activation failures affecting production workloads was a real concern for some potential Windows Servier 2008 customers given some of the recent, highly publicized failures of WGA. The truth is, most firms want to do the right thing but have difficulty keeping track of their Microsoft licensing. They don’t want to bear the burden — and shoulder the associated risk — of Microsoft’s larger fight against piracy. At first blush, newer techniques like Key Management Service (KMS) seem like a major administrative undertaking but are actually a step in the right direction as they allow customers to better track licenses in use. In the case of the aforementioned university, this new technique would have limited exposure.

As Microsoft continues to refine its activation methods, balancing anti-piracy and customer convenience is paramount. In its fight against piracy, Microsoft should keep legitimate customers top of mind by easing the burden brought on by license management.

By Chris Voce

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Microsoft’s Official Hyper-V Beta Hits The Streets

Microsoft released their official beta of Hyper-V on Thursday, taking a step towards getting their next-generation server virtualization solution out the door. The release did come as somewhat of a surprise. The beta was due to be released along with the RTM of Windows Server 2008, and when that was delayed into Q1 it left us to question what the state of Hyper-V’s beta release was. The guidance has not changed however around the release of the final version — it’s still 180 days from the RTM of Windows Server 2008, not from this release of the beta.

Another important footnote around Hyper-V is the recent update of Microsoft’s Windows Server licensing scheme; which has been updated to not charge users for the management (or “parent”) partition as a license. In a Hyper-V server installation there is one management OS instance on each physical server to handle housekeeping tasks and it was unclear how this would be licensed. This means that an Enterprise license entitles customers to four legitimate OS instances on a physical box and users aren’t penalized for the management partition that, ideally, should not have software installed on it. Windows Server 2008 Standard licenses also don’t have to be dedicated to the management instance.

The story remains the same though for the software giant, they have a tough road ahead in chipping away at VMware’s lead in server virtualization. Microsoft’s execution on the promise to marry physical and virtual infrastructure management in the growing System Center family while enabling new ways to provide virtualization-enabled infrastructure features will be key factors in the platform gaining traction in x86 environments; especially in areas like high availability and disaster recovery.

By Christopher Voce

Check out Christopher's research.

Microsoft’s Two-Pronged Server Virtualization Attack

Today, Microsoft gave their next-gen hypervisor a new name and took the covers off of several aspects related to their upcoming server virtualization plans. Hyper-V (formerly known as Viridian and Windows Server Virtualization) comes in two basic flavors: bundled with Windows Server 2008 and as a standalone product. The first is what we already knew it was going to be, a role in the OS that could be added like IIS or any other service. For those that don’t want to re-buy a hypervisor, namely those that are purchasing it for their VMware environments, they offer Windows Server 2008 without Hyper-V at a $28 discount. By adding Hyper-V as a nominal fee, they hope to chip away at VMware’s huge market share. For many Microsoft shops, this might be an enticing option. Feature for feature, it doesn’t stack up well against ESX at all, but for those that are comfortable with the Microsoft way of doing things and have plans to deploy or expand their System Center use, this might offer “good-enough” capability for their short-term, consolidation-focused goals while Microsoft catches up on developing Hyper-V’s missing features. And hey, it’s practically free.

The second product, Microsoft Hyper-V Server, is a more interesting story. Note the title doesn’t even mention Windows — Microsoft has shown that they are willing to separate server virtualization from their full server OS into a lighter-weight version that will be faster to deploy. Wide-scale, server OS deployments don’t happen overnight, and this gives firms the flexibility to deploy Microsoft’s server virtualization separately from Windows Server 2008; giving Microsoft a second vehicle to grab more server virtualization market share. It remains to be seen, however, just how separate the development of Hyper-V Server is from Windows Server. Weighing in at roughly one gigabyte, it has the appearance of being a stripped-down Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Will enhancements like Live Migration be timed with Windows Server 2008 R2? Going forward, Microsoft has to prove in their products, from Windows Server through the System Center family, that server virtualization is not just about the hypervisor — it’s about overall virtual infrastructure management and how it weaves into their strategies like creating effective high availability solutions and disaster recovery plans.

By Christopher Voce

Check out Christopher's research.

Microsoft’s Virtualization Woes Continue

Microsoft has fallen upon tough times in the x86 server virtualization space. Following an announcement last month in which they delayed the beta for Windows Server virtualization (aka Viridian), a recent Windows Server team blog entry announced certain core features would not be a part of the initial production release. We believe a production-ready hypervisor is one of the biggest draws to the Longhorn Server platform, and stripping features coupled with a delay getting a product into testers’ hands is a setback in their effort to deliver a competitive alternative to VMware’s solutions. In particular, the removal of live-migration and hot-add resources in Viridian’s initial release make it less dynamic than VMware. Instead of live migration, Microsoft will recommend clustering, which is frequently used for high availability, but less so for non-critical applications. Furthermore, it isn’t clear when the dropped features will be available or if customers will have to wait until Microsoft ships R2 in 2009.

Going forward, Microsoft has two big challenges. First, it must deliver Windows Server virtualization as close as possible to the “0” in their stated 0-180 day window following Longhorn’s release. And second, Microsoft must convince customers that it understands the importance of server virtualization and has a product roadmap that will rival VMware’s.

By Chris Voce