Post By Martin 2 Comments
May 2008 28

Virtualization and licensing – the debate continues

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/28150

With the introduction of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft improved its software licensing options for virtualized servers. Still license fees for virtual servers, as well as support of software running on them, remain big areas of contention for Microsoft customers. But customers will be hard pressed to find loopholes in Microsoft’s terms, suggests Forrester analyst Christopher Voce at Forrester’s IT Forum in Las Vegas Friday. However, customers are creatively trying to circumvent the virtualization issue when they need product support, and not just with Microsoft products, according to a recent Burton Group report. It said customers of numerous software vendors deal with support limitations by “accidentally” failing to disclose that an application is running on a virtual machine, or by cloning virtual machines to a physical server before calling support.

Check out this article talking about licensing and virtualization a topic of interest and debate that is set to continue, an interesting read.

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One Comment

  1. ST2 says:
    May 29, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    It could be a likened to the fact that in times gone by many application vendors failed to support their applications installed on Citrix ( or should we say “Micro$oft Terminal Services). What did customers do? Advised that it was installed on a hardened desktop OS :)

    Slightly off topic, but the client I currently work for are one of 60 companies worldwide who have a deal to deploy as many VI3 Enterprise Hosts for server consolidation as they need. It seems that we are going through another global licensing period…the next on the list I hear is a similar Citrix deal.

    This is going to increase the number of VM Guests…and this is going to compound the issues. Big companies will empower Microsoft with their size but where does this leave the SME’s? VMware are bringing out products targeted at these smaller businesses and obviously they will be more concerned than the big ones.

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