Microsoft alters virtualization license terms

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By David Worthington

August 28, 2008 — Adapting to the changing IT landscape, Microsoft has modified its licensing terms for server applications to accommodate virtualization.

Last week [In August], the company announced new licensing and product support policies that it said would help customers create more dynamic systems with virtualized software. The new terms allow customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed.

“IDC research is finding that the use of server virtualization is moving past the early adopter stage and is quickly becoming a mainstream solution,” said Al Gillen, research vice president for system software at IDC, in a prepared statement. “As IT professionals update their standard server images for new installations, they are increasingly integrating virtualization to simplify deployments, to increase the system flexibility, boost usage rates and increase portability of the applications.”

Previously, the onus was on Microsoft customers to acquire more licenses when an application was moved from one server to another. Licenses were not assigned if applications were not moved back.

The licensing changes apply to 41 server applications, including Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Office SharePoint Server 2007, SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, and System Center products.

“Microsoft is basically bringing itself in line with other virtualized licensing practices in the industry,” said Bola Rotibi, principal analyst with Macehiter Ward-Dutton. “It makes more sense to enable customers to manage licenses more productively and easily; anything that makes implementing virtualized systems easier is a good thing.”

The company has also realigned its support policies to the same end. It will now provide technical support for 31 products when they are deployed on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Windows Hyper-V Server or any “validated” third-party virtualization platform. More information is available on Microsoft’s support Web page.

Microsoft launched a program called Server Virtualization Validation in June. To date, Cisco Systems, Citrix Systems, Novell, Sun Microsystems and Virtual Iron Software are participating in the program, according to Microsoft.

The company shipped Hyper-V, its hypervisor-based virtualization system, in June. Microsoft intended to include Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 as a virtualization infrastructure for enterprises, but fell short of that goal, bundling a feature-incomplete beta version instead.

Hyper-V, formerly known as “Viridian,” can be used to test applications and plan future consolidation, business continuity, and high-availability projects, according to Microsoft. It requires a host running the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008, as well as specific server hardware features that enable virtualization and data execution protection.

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