In what could be a sign of things to come, Microsoft Corp. is offering a small sweetener to its Software Assurance licensing program. From this week the company will allow servers used for disaster recovery to carry copies of its Windows server software at no extra cost. Update: Elsewhere, IBM this week relaxed stringent requirements for running the highest-end version of its Windows server software, effectively lowering the overall price 30 percent in some cases and potentially expanding the pool of interested customers.
Microsoft offering free OS for ‘cold’ servers
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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This is just plain silly. You could already do this. They are not giving you anything new. If you are not using the two servers at the same time, you only need one license. Most enterprise licenses allow you to move the licenses between machines so long as you have the right amount of licenses for all the machines that are in USE.
Silly PR move.
I wonder if people do not get tired of playing the silly game of tracking licenses…
Soner or later, all MS OSes will be available for free as in bear. The competition from free and open source will se to that. There are allready too many people that are pissed of by ages of forced upgrades bad licence terms and high prices from large software venders like Microsoft. They will move from Microsoft when a free alternative that fill their needs becomes availble.
This will force Microsoft to move to a service based business model too. And then they will need keep their customers, the way to do that is to supply the OS for free.
MS is Way out in left field with SA….heck they’re not even in the same ballpark!
Industry standard “software maintenance” is 18% of the sale price yearly, including upgrades to latest-and-greatest for as long as yout keep paying and 9-5 telephone support. MS is demanding nearly 27% per year [please pay 3 years up front!] with 0 phone support.
Not to mention that, but MS software is also a rip-off, Since they started SA they’ve been pretty slow with the upgrades [when they could be making a killing with small, cheap ones like the linux distros do..and they need to upgrade their consumer base], They’ve conviently created new “versions” with all the cool new feature so that businesses gotta buy-up from the SA they already paid for! It’s classic bait and switch; the advertize all the cool new features on TV, but when you go to order they’re only available in “Enterprise” packages costing 10 times more. Not to mention the retail price increases of $50-$75 for each version since 97. That’s just a straw poll from visiting too many office stores, but it’s about right…Office 97 pro was about $200 retail, Office 2004 “Enterpise” is nearly $600! On top of that you don’t even get “license compliance” tools with your $100k payment!!! Like they expect you to pay $10k more for the “privillage” of using their management tools to manage their screwed up licenses and buggy software!
Not to mention that, but they don’t got any customer service skills at all! That they can expect you to pay a glorified telemarketer your $100,000 for your SA payment is the final straw. They can’t even put anybody on the phone that’s a real salesperson that will work with you to meet your needs and explain what all those SA’s actually mean!!! If you haven’t guessed I’m a little sore because My boss just went thru this! He’s looking to drop $300k for 3 plants and has had to do all the leg work him self…80 hours of license management, plus 40 hours on the phone trying to figure it all out!
Here’s the opportunity for Novell/Red Hat/etc…!! The real question is not how bad MS is, but what can you buy from these linux guys for $300k!!! Sure MS is easier to use now, but they’re leaving a trail of pissed off people with lots of cash like my boss… but they gotta show that they can toe the line. They gotta start marketing now for the next 3 years and they might have a chance in hell.
Would someone please explain how I can keep MS Exchange 2000 severs updated and in sync with the live servers while they are switched off?
Or, how I can patch them for security updates?
“Would someone please explain how I can keep MS Exchange 2000 severs updated and in sync with the live servers while they are switched off?
Or, how I can patch them for security updates?”
Continually take advantage of M$’s update cd’s. That way you have the updates
. Or is that just for doze?
Or you could just dump them and use something with a less restrictive license.
“Microsoft offering free OS …”
You should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free beer,’ not as in ‘free speech.’