Anyone know how to tell if a particular Product Key if for one of these trial versions, expired or not? In exactly the same boat, right in the middle of a big virtualisation progam and Microsoft drop this on my lap.
Almost finished filling it in but I must admit I hadnt had time since starting this job to do a full license audit so this will be an helpful exercise and luckily looks like my predecessor despite all his bad practices had managed to purchase correct licences at least.
Urgh - my ex-manager got one of these had me run around spread-sheeting all our licence microsoft gubbins. He ended up being made redundant, and one month into being left on my own to handle everything found out he'd never submitted all the licensing details I'd collated for him, and MS were hounding after everything.
Anyways, explained the situation to the MS guy, he was really helpful, my spreadsheets were a bit of a waste of time as MS wanted their forms filled in their way.
The forms go back and forth between you and MS and they highlighted, according to their records, we were short of something like 25 CALs Showed them proof of purchase and we were all good and audited successfully.
It seemed like if you were going to be over what you should have been a bit they were just going to push you to making up the shortfall, as opposed to stringing you up in court - perhaps if you refused then things would get nasty. Having just recently been through this process its not as bad as it first sounds! Microsoft provide a spreadsheet with a big list of software titles, you then enter the number of copies you have of these titles and with a bit of back and forth chat via email they check what they have on file for you and as long as the number match all is good.
We are a company with around employees and had a couple of licenses a drift on Windows 7 so all i had to do was provide the license key of these units Retail Boxed and then our numbers matched up. Depending on size of business and what your records are like its not to much effort all in mine took around a week over a number of days as i fitted it in between daily tasks and thats based with me having no cental admin system so kind of worse case If you are unsure give the contact a call as the Microsoft Rep was really helpful being this was my first ever experience of licensing so at first was rather concerned and in fact as a result of this i have ended up finding Spiceworks so in a way glad i did have the audit or i would not have joined up over here We have staff who use the PC's but don't use email, plus a lot more staff who don't use office.
Yeah just to add to SamAnders, if you're up front with them about your situation and keep in contact with them as you go through the process the consultants are helpful and not to be feared! I got that email right before my company acquired another that had just gone through the same audit. That company's owner used "cost cutting" techniques like using the same Office 2K3 serial for 50 different computers.
It still took some time to accumulate the data for Microsoft, considering I was a one man IT dept with about 5 servers and devices, with absolutely no VLK licensing. After a couple of emails with attached spreadsheets back and forth, everything was sorted out. Thank god AutoCAD didn't audit us that year we're fully licensed now. This makes me value my company even more hearing these stories. If even mentioned using pirated software as a cost savings I would be worried if I would even have a job the next day.
In My company authenticity and integrity is paramount. So is philanthropy, on a side note. To continue this discussion, please ask a new question. Get answers from your peers along with millions of IT pros who visit Spiceworks. Popular Topics in Microsoft Licensing. Spiceworks Help Desk. The help desk software for IT. Track users' IT needs, easily, and with only the features you need. Learn More ». Pure Capsaicin. Davison Apr 23, at UTC. I'd start talking to accounting about purchase records to be prepared.
Thai Pepper. In this report, you will be notified of any areas where you have a surplus or a deficiency of licenses. Any deficiencies will then need to be corrected by buying more licenses from an authorized reseller such as Mirazon.
So in a nutshell, you will supply information about what is currently being used in your environment as well as what FPP and OEM licenses you own, Microsoft will supply information about the volume licenses you own, and a third-party SAM consultant will analyze the data and tell you if you are out of compliance.
At the end of the day, you may need to purchase some additional licenses to cover your environment and your users. But unless you are seriously abusing Microsoft products for example, using a single license to install Windows Server on 20 machines , then there probably will not be any serious consequences.
As always, Mirazon is here to help. Close Search. This is a relatively new procedure for Microsoft so things may change, but the way I currently understand it the process is this: Step 1: To be completed by Mirazon engineer and client. This is a rather long form where you will need to report: details about your company and any affiliates, what Microsoft products you currently have deployed in your environment, what boxed product FPP and pre-installed OEM licenses you own, and information about how you manage your software.
Whatever you do, just make sure you go into one of these engagements with your eyes wide open. A good feed of similar resources to this letter can be found here. Click on image to enlarge or view the download here.
This is legitimate and licensing contracts have audit clauses included. Vendors seek to protect their IP and revenue stream — all of which is legitimate as well. So I am not too sure that a request from a vendor can be ignored.
A better approach may be to ask for additional time. Any thoughts or comments on this? No vendor will reimburse over-licensing spending. However, just having visibility of such can be of help to the customer.
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