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Welcome, everyone. This is Becky from TechSoup. I'd like to welcome you today
for joining us for the Microsoft Software Assurance: Upgrades and More webinar.
We're going to get started right now. I just want to go through a little bit of housekeeping
before we get into the actual content of the webinar. I will go ahead and tell you a little bit
about Ready Talk. If this is your first time joining us, you can chat in the chat box
that you see in the bottom side of your screen. You can raise your hand if you have a question.
You're welcome to just put those questions right in the chat box for us as well.
If you lose your Internet connection, please reconnect using the confirmation email link
that you received when you registered. You can also call ReadyTalk support if you have any issues.
Your audio will play through your computer speakers. Obviously, if you're not hearing this,
you probably will be messaging us to ask how you can listen. There is also an optional call-in number,
if you need that, which we can put out to the group via chat if anybody needs to dial in that way.
Also, just to let you know, you are being recorded today.
We do this so that we can have a nice archive of all of these events
so that people who aren't able to join us are able to find them later at techsoup.org/go/webinars.
You will receive a link to this recording, the slides, and any resources discussed,
after the webinar is over, either later today or sometime tomorrow.
If you're on Twitter and want to talk about this event, feel free to tweet out
using the hash tag #techsoup.
With that, I'll go ahead and get us started. I'm going to introduce our presenters here.
I again, am Becky Wiegand. I'm an editor here at TechSoup, and I'll be facilitating our call today.
We also have with us Gregor Kneitz. He is a Product Manager at Microsoft.
He works in their Software Assurance Division. He'll be speaking to us with quite a bit of expertise
about his experience working with Software Assurance and seeing that organizations get that.
We'll also be joined by Cameron Jones who is a Product Manager here at TechSou
and helps manage our Software Donation program. You will see folks assisting in the chat:
Gretchen Deo from Microsoft, William from TechSoup, and also Brenda from TechSoup,
whose name I forgot to put on the slide. With that, I'll go ahead and walk us through
our agenda. Again, if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat box
throughout the webinar, and we'll be capturing those for the Q&A at the end.
We'll start off with a basic introduction of what is software assurance.
We know that it comes free with a lot of the Microsoft donations that are procured
through TechSoup. We'll go over what these things are, the cost reduction and benefits
that come with it, and the volume licensing service center where you can access these benefits.
Then we'll go into more detail with an overview of all the benefits that are included.
We will cover some more advanced benefits, but we are keeping those in our appendix.
So if you are a tech consultant or you are the IT person at your organization,
you may find that we aren't going to cover that in much detail but you'll find more details at the end
of the slide deck. Then we'll talk a little bit about whether it's to your benefit
to renew Software Assurance at the end of two years,
or whether it's best to just request a new software donation.
Before we jump into that, who is TechSoup? If this is your first time joining us,
TechSoup is part of TechSoup Global and we're working towards the day when every nonprofit,
library, and social benefit organization on the planet has the technology, knowledge,
and resources they need to operate at their full potential.
We are a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, and we distribute technology donations from our partners
like Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, and Symantec, around the world in 40 countries.
With that, I want to go ahead and start us off with a quick poll. If you can, take just a moment
and click on which benefits of Software Assurance you have previously accessed
as part of your donation. You can go ahead and take a minute.
We'll let you read through these options, whether you've gotten free upgrades;
whether you've upgraded your Pro version of software to an Enterprise edition;
if you've used the virtual desktop access or roaming use —
we'll explain what all these mean later, if you don't know what they mean — license mobility;
if you've accessed any of the E-learning trainings; installed Microsoft Office on your home computer
with your software assurance; used any of the multi-language benefits; none of the above;
or I don't know what any of these are! That's what we're here today
to hopefully get you up to speed on a bit more.
With that, most folks have had a chance to respond, so I'm going to go ahead
and give a countdown and then I will go ahead and skip to the results. So five, four, three, two, one.
So 39% of our users have done none of the above, and 25% of our participants today
don't know what these are. So that's great that you're joining us.
Hopefully we'll be able to get you more knowledgeable about this set of free benefits
that come with your Microsoft software donations. It looks like the most folks in the webinar today
who have used something have used it to upgrade to the latest software.
We'll get into more detail with that in just a moment.
With that, I'll go ahead and introduce us formally to Gregor Kneitz,
who is a Senior Product Manager for Software Assurance at the Microsoft Corporation.
Gregor, we would love to have you join us on the line and get us started
with explaining what is Software Assurance, and then we'll talk about
how we get it. Welcome, Gregor.
Gregor: Thank you very much, Becky, and thank you very much for the opportunity
to talk to you about Software Assurance. I think it's really great
to have this poll at the beginning to really see what the interest is
and what the level is of people. So let's jump right in.
What is Software Assurance? I'm glad I can start from that point
because often people really equate Software Assurance with just the new version right.
It's the right to upgrade your software at any time. Also, as the poll shows,
many of you are experienced with that. It is the predominant one.
It's the very start of Software Assurance, how software assurance came to life.
But today Software Assurance over the last 12 years really has evolved into way more.
It is a comprehensive package of help and services and rights that you can pair
with the licenses that you own, and it makes your life around running software and owning software
a lot easier. The question we ask ourselves at Microsoft, yes, it's great to bring the license
within the software products to people, but what then? What is next? What are the problems?
What are the challenges with installing, deploying, and running those software packages?
That is what Software Assurance is there for. It's an assurance to make sure that your organization
that you don't just have the right software to solve problems, but you also have this package
of benefits that makes it a lot easier and cost - effective
to run that software within your organization.
Becky: That's great. Just to mention, Software Assurance is included with all of the donations
of Microsoft programs through TechSoup, with the exception of the Get Genuine program. —
if you are requesting stuff from Get Genuine, or don't know what that means,
we'll explain it a little bit later — but all of our upgrades and all of our server licenses
come with Software Assurance. So this is included in almost everything that you get
through the Donation Program. With that, I'll let you get back to your slides.
Gregor: Thank you, Becky. This is just a brief overview of all the benefits that you are receiving.
As mentioned, Software Assurance is included in almost all of the software,
and these are all the benefits that you are going to receive together with the Software Assurance
on your software. They're grouped, and I'm not going to go through them one by one.
We're going to talk a little later about specific benefits. I just wanted to show on that slide
that it's really the comprehensiveness of the package is to guide you through the whole process
of owning a software license. It's not just running it. It is planning, to have the right plans
for your software, for your needs, what you actually want to have in place.
The big challenge of deploying software which is often, in distributed areas,
difficult to get the knowledge and the skills out with your organizational members
to work with new software versions, and then just the general operational usage of software,
how to make that as smooth and as easy as possible.
So Software Assurance is meant to guide you and help you through all of these different phases.
Why install or why use the Software Assurance benefits?
We have a great study done, because even in the commercial space
where customers purchase Software Assurance, they purchase it sometimes just
for one or two single benefits. Most of the time, again, the new version rights are the driving factor
for the decision to purchase Software Assurance, but then all the other benefits
are not really used because customers don't dive in there.
We did a study and we compared organizations who actually use the SA benefits
they have versus the ones who do not use the SA benefits they have.
As you can see here, regardless of whether you actually purchased Software Assurance
or you got it granted through the donation, it makes a huge cost savings difference per year
and per user. They determined over $300 of cost savings,
just running the software in your organization. Using the benefits and having all the trainings
in place, having all the administration and maintenance tools in place,
and reducing the headaches for your administrative staff to rollout the software
has a huge impact on the cost. You can bring down your operational costs.
Sometimes you can break it down into specific costs, often through just the time
and headaches for the drivers for the software administrators, that it can drastically reduce
by actually using the benefits, getting the people trained, having the right maintenance
and administration tools in place. So it's a strong argument for not just having one or two rights
but really looking at the whole portfolio of benefits that are available to you.
Becky: That's great, Gregor. Really just to mention, somebody asked if SA equals Software Assurance.
Just to clarify it, that is. You'll see SA on the slides throughout the webinar,
and that is Software Assurance. In regard to this slide, though, a lot of smaller organizations,
nonprofits or libraries might have a part-time IT person or a staff person
who's their "accidental techy" who gets to be responsible for managing software,
even though they still have another full-time job. Software Assurance can bring down the amount
of time that person has to spend, or if you have a team of people, those people have to spend.
This is the kind of thing that is an overlooked benefit a lot of times by organizations
because they don't realize that all of this is here and it's free, included in their donated software.
So it's a great opportunity to reduce your organization's costs for managing your software.
With that, I'll hand it back to Gregor to show us a little bit.
Gregor: To add to your point, which is really a great point, often when people
are the sole administrator, the one software person who is responsible for maintaining, installing,
driving all the software roll-out, while still actually having a day job and doing something different
as well, these people are often so busy that they think, "Oh, I don't really have time
to look into these benefits." Actually you would cut out time and start looking at the benefits
and using them, that could free up a lot of space in the rest of your day
because the users would find answers right away or the administration,
you could do a lot of administrative stuff centrally and just one time
instead of for each of the machines. So it's definitely worth looking into the benefits.
Becky: Right. Absolutely. And the other area is we have a lot of training resources that are available
through software assurance, and we'll talk more about that a little bit later.
But just getting up to speed on how to use programs takes staff a lot of time,
and if you don't realize that you can access all of these free trainings and E-learning courses
to learn how to use the software at your fingertips, then that saves you from having to search the web
for answers. With that, I want to just have you tell us where do people access Software Assurance.
Where do they find it?
Gregor: There is one single point of entry that often provides or will always provide
pretty much all the answers to the questions you have about Software Assurance,
and that's the Volume Licensing Service Center.
There's a link to that at the end of the presentation, so you will also receive that.
The VLSC — I'm sorry. Microsoft is a world of acronyms, so I'll try to keep them down
as much as possible but Volume Licensing Service Center is such a long name, so VLSC.
The VLSC is the portal that gives you all the information around your licensing position,
and the benefits that you have. Let me just mark here for a second. If you look at the top,
you have the licenses here. All the licenses that you own,
all the licenses that your organization holds can be seen here in one comprehensive overview,
all actions needed and taken. With that, you can execute here.
Right next to it is the Downloads and Keys center. Downloads and Keys provides you the link
to the download site. If you don't have the physical media, here you can find the download
for the software that you're holding and the installation key.
So if you have one installation media and you're holding multiple licenses,
here you can get the keys to install that software. In the Software Assurance part,
here's the benefits administration center where you can activate, work with,
and administrate all of the Software Assurance benefits.
At the entry point of the VLSC you can also see there is a learning portal in the bottom right,
so there are multiple vehicles around all the different ways, how to use the center,
how to administrate, how to perform the most important actions.
There is also a great FAQ list that you can use. So this is pretty much the start point for everything
around your licensing and the Software Assurance benefits.
Becky: Terrific. If people can't see that screen, you can also click to view full screen at the to
of your ReadyTalk screen so that you can see more detail of that screen
and also the next one that's coming up that is a little bit smaller print.
Gregor: Yes. Now jumping into the Software Benefit Administration screen,
and don't worry if you can't read everything on here, this screen is just supposed to show you
the concept. Here you get the list of all of the benefits that you are entitled to,
including the details of how many entitlements you have, how many seats for E-learning
you're holding, for example, Office home use program called HUP you're entitled to,
and all administration information that you need, program codes, keys, download site.
If it's for example, a version right that you have, you get the download site here as well as directly.
This is the one administration point where, if you're not sure exactly what you have,
you can learn here. You can also find more information about the benefits,
but most of all this is the administration point where you perform all of the administrative actions
for your benefits. I just wanted to give an example of what a walk-through would look like.
When you're starting completely fresh and new, you just signed up for the VLSC
with your new license for Software Assurance that you received, and you want to get started
on one of the benefits. This is just a quick step-by-step walk-through
of how you actually go from just having the benefit granted to having usage of that benefit.
It's basically a five-step process. It starts with the Software Assurance benefits administrator.
That is the person you determine at the initial sign-up at the VLSC.
It's the person who has the right to basically distribute those benefits in the organization.
They go in and they have to activate the benefit. Activation comes with different information given,
depending on the different benefits. So in terms of the home use program —
if you don't know what the home use program (HUP) is, we're going to talk a little bit later
about more what home use program actually does. Here is just a walk-through as an example
how to activate it, but we're going to get to the nature of home use program in a little bit.
So the Software Assurance benefits administrator goes in and activates the HUP benefit.
To activate, you have to give two pieces of information.
You have to give your organization's domain name that is used for the email addresses
of all the organizational members, and you have to generate a program code that will be generated
for you. Those two pieces of information, the domain which is naturally given anyhow,
and that program code can then be sent out to organization members who want to use HUP,
and who should use HUP. They can take that information home on their home machines,
access the HUP website from their home computers, enter their email addresses,
so it has to be a valid email address that is the same that was given in the original definition,
and the program code. That locks them into the HUP website.
There, they can use their private credit card to pay the program fee, and that gives them access
either to the download or to order an Office media so then they can install Office
on their home use machine and work with Office in parallel at home to their work machine.
Becky: Great. Thank you. So this is a little bit complicated-looking,
but really it's just the way to get access to installing Office on your home computer
because you have a valid license to use it in your office. This extends that access
to your home machine. When he mentioned the fees, we'll talk a little bit more about that later,
but it's a pretty nominal fee, like $9.95, to be able to install it on your home machine.
Gregor: The big point is really here that just the basic concept that is true for most of the benefits,
it always starts with the benefits administrator, one central person activating the benefit,
writing the information needed for the benefit, then distributing information about the benefit
within the organization, and then the users being able to go in and use the benefit.
Those are basically the three major steps that always happen for each one of the benefits.
Becky: Terrific. And this is just an example for how to do it for this one benefit.
We put it in here so that when you get the slide deck later,
after the webinar in the follow-up resources, if you want to try and do this,
that you have these steps detailed out for you. Again, the Volume Licensing Service Center
helps you walk through these steps. With that, we can go ahead and jump into what all of the benefits
are in a little bit more detail. We've mentioned some of them,
and Gregor is going to take us through the actual benefits with some descriptions.
Some of it might sound a little technical. If you're not the tech person and you're the decision-maker
or an executive director and you just kind of want to get the gist,
you can ignore some of the technical terminology and just let the people who do your IT
know that these benefits are there. Go find them.
With that, Gregor, I'll let you go ahead and take it over.
Gregor: I'll hold back on thant tech lingo as much as possible.
Becky: Thank you. We appreciate that.
Gregor: Okay, let's just jump in with the highlights. As mentioned before and also seen in the poll,
new product version rights is the one central piece of Software Assurance.
That is the right that pretty much determines that, as long as you have Software Assurance
on a software license you're holding, you're entitled to every upgrade Microsoft releases
for that product. In practical terms, just as an example, that means if you're having a license
for Office 2007 and Microsoft releases Office 2010 and you have active Software Assurance
on your Office 2007 license, that means you're now licensed for Office 2010.
There are typical questions around that, like when does that exactly kick in? How long does that last?
Those licenses are, in technical terms, what we call perpetual. So you will always own this license
and so, the upgrade. You don't need to actually install the latest version of the software.
It's enough to have Software Assurance at the point in time when the new version comes out.
You can hold off, even when Software Assurance expires at a later point of time,
as long as you had it at the point of time when the new version came out,
you're entitled to install that software at any point of time when you want to.
This is basically specific to the software with Software Assurance.
So you can upgrade only the products that have Software Assurance.
It's not for entire product families, for example.
Becky: Great. Gregor, just because we know we get this question pretty frequently from people,
but if you have a critical program that is only compatible with an older version of a software,
can people use this benefit to also downgrade?
Gregor: Yes. You also have — it's usually the latest or the last version.
You can stay on the last version, and you can even install it, get the download
also through the VLSC of the latest version, so that is included in the licensing.
You could just not run two in parallel, so you have to run either one or the other version,
but the previous version is included as well, yes.
Cameron: And just to be clear, hi, this is Cameron Jones at TechSoup.
Previous older versions of software, those are not a feature of Software Assurance.
Those are a feature of volume licensing. So even if your Software Assurance benefits have expired,
you can still always access the previous versions of the software.
Gregor. Yes.
Becky: Terrific. We love getting free stuff.
Gregor: So let's jump to the next one, Windows Enterprise. It's also a very popular experience
with Software Assurance. Windows Enterprise is a special version of the Windows client software
that is only exclusively available under Software Assurance. So If you have a full Windows version
that has Software Assurance on it, and usually that's Windows Professional,
that entitles you now to use the different versions of Windows Enterprise version.
The difference between the Windows Professional and the Windows Enterprise version
are a lot of administration and security benefits that you will see.
I've listed a couple of things here. DirectAccess and BranchCache are usually very, very valuable
in distributive organizations. DirectAccess allows you from mobile machines, laptops for example,
to access your company IT environment from outside of that environment.
That can work without having to go through virtual connections, dial-ins, smart cards,
all the usual technologies that you need to dial into your work environment.
DirectAccess can basically set up a secure tunnel from an outside network into your network
to enable you a smooth experience, even when you're not in your network.
BranchCache is very valuable in distributive organizations,
especially when you have smaller organizations, just like three, four, five clients
in each physical location, to have the syncing of those clients
not really eat up too much bandwidth and have that cached smartly.
Also security benefits are included, BitLocker and AppLocker. BitLocker is a feature
that allows you for laptops but also desktop machines to have the complete machine
encrypted. That means that even if the machine gets lost or stolen, it's virtually impossible
to get to the data on that machine. AppLocker keeps a strong administrative hand
on what kind of applications get installed on machines,
so you can basically keep your work machines clean and restrict very much what gets installed
and not have the machines cluttered up by wildly installed software.
In addition, you also have access to MDOP. That means you can purchase MDOP on top.
It's also an exclusive right for Software Assurance to have access to MDOP.
I'm not going to go into more details. The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
is a whole suite of products that enables remote administration and virtualization.
When you work with these features, MDOP is really valuable in your organization.
Again, a little bit more of a technical slide. I'm not going to go too deep into technology,
just say there is Virtual Desktop Access and the Office Roaming Use Rights.
It's a whole world of virtualization where you run your desktop with your work environment
within your company. If you want to virtualize that environment, if you want to access
that environment from every location outside of your organization, from personal machines,
home machines, kiosk machines, hotel machines, you usually would need additional licensing.
You would need virtualization licenses to access some of these components.
All of these virtualization rights are included in Software Assurance,
so once you have that office environment or work environment under Software Assurance,
you have all of these virtualization rights included, and that makes running the software a lot easier.
The corresponding part for the work environment with the back office is license mobility.
One of the big trends today obviously is virtualization, and more and more infrastructure
gets actually moved from an on-premise in the office physical use of server products
to a hosted environment where you're moving your servers from your office environment
to an Internet service provider or some kind of hosting service provider
that is running your software for you and is doing the maintenance for you,
and make those servers available globally throughout the Internet.
Again, there are licensing limitations for something like that.
So if you do not have Software Assurance, you cannot just simply move a server license
from your environment to a hosting provider. With Software Assurance, on the other side,
this is possible. So if you have Software Assurance on your license that was granted to you,
on your server license, that will allow you to just move this license to a service provider.
So if you go to a service provider, for example, for a database,
and you want an Internet-hosted database, they would usually charge you for the hosting
plus for the server license again. But if you can show them you have a server license
with Software Assurance, they will not charge you for that server again.
So you can just move that right over. It's a huge cost savings in that environment.
Becky: Terrific, and I know those were fairly technical slides but for IT folks
or organizations that could really benefit from that, if you have a consultant who does your tech,
if it's not somebody on staff, those benefits are really valuable, even if you don't realize it.
So the things that people may use, that anybody can use, that might be a great way
to get staff up to speed are some of these E-learning courses.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Gregor: Absolutely. I promise now it gets easier. We are through with the worst
of the technical slides. But as I said, the previous ones, especially around the virtualization,
and usually you work with consultants, with outside companies to help you virtualize,
even if you're not quite sure what you're having with it, always make sure that you're telling them
that you have Software Assurance on your product because that also makes it for them easier
to pinpoint and pick the exact rights that you want to use in that environment.
E-learning: What's obvious about E-learning is Microsoft has over 1500 hours of E-learning
across the different product pools. The way you qualify for E-learning,
again, is you're buying one of the Microsoft products with Software Assurance on top.
That gives you access to the entire pool of that product. So for applications, for example,
if you get granted a project, a Microsoft project with Software Assurance on top,
that gives you access to the complete applications pool, all the Office, Visio,
everything that we are having in the applications pool you can access through Software Assurance,
through that grant. The other pools are systems and servers.
So basically within those three pools, you can access all of the E-learnings in there.
Becky: Terrific. And you mentioned if you purchase it and, again, for our users who
are getting it through the Donations Program, this comes included with the donations
that you receive through Microsoft. So you can send a new staff person
over to learn how to use the software that's just been installed on their machine
and not have to dedicate your own staff time to do that kind of training.
We also had a question from the chat asking whether there will be E-learning available
for Windows 8.
Gregor: Yes, definitely. It's an ongoing process. We have an E-learning pool
where we constantly bring in new trainings, new courses, so absolutely, yes,
there will be Windows 8 training available through E-learning.
And also, coming back to the cost savings from before, E-learning is really a key element
in many different factors because on the one side, it makes the time spent on certain tasks
so much more productive. The higher the learning level is, the higher the skill level is
of your organizational members, the faster tasks can be accomplished,
but it's also satisfaction part where basically the whole works of the section goes up.
You don't get frustrated because you cannot solve a specific problem.
If you just know how to do things and if you just know how to use the software,
this is really invaluable. And, again, the whole cost of running software, support costs,
administration costs, goes drastically down the more the learning benefit
is leveraged in your organization.
Becky: Terrific.
Gregor: That brings us to Home Use Program. We already talked a little bit before
about the technicalities and how to run it. Now we will do an overview
of what is the Home Use Program? If you have Microsoft Office Suite,
if you got granted the Office Suite with Software Assurance, that entitles you
to the Home Use Program. That means for each product, so for each license of Office that you got
granted with Software Assurance, you're entitled for one Home Use license.
So if you have 15 Office Suites, you're entitled to 15 Home Use licenses.
That means 15 members of your organization can install Office Professional 2010,
or whatever the latest version is, in addition with Language Packs
but also Office for Mac Visio Project, on their home machines for a very small nominal fee.
So we went through the process how to activate it. You'll activate the benefit.,
You'll generate the code. You'll give the codes to your organization members,
and they just can go on their home machine, go to the website, and for only $10, for $9.95
for download, or for $12 for if they want the physical media,
they can bring Office on their home machines and use Office without any limitations,
the full Office license on their machines as long as your Software Assurance in the organization
is active. So basically your Office license that you have in the organization
together with the Software Assurance expands the licensing through this Home Use Program.
I'm not going to wait for questions because usually there's a lot of questions
around the Home Use Program, but I think we're going to address them in the question part.
There is just one last benefit I want to point out, and that is the multi-lingual environments.
I just mention it here for the HUP as well. That's also an SA benefit.
For Windows 8, it's now included in the standard license, but for Office the multi-language pack
is actually a product that you would have to purchase. It enables you to switch the language
user interface completely for all of the Office applications.
So if you have an, I don't know, for example, if you're operating in French-speaking Canada,
you might want all of the machines to have English and French available,
depending on what user is sitting at the machine. Usually that would mean
either you would need to buy two parallel licenses, which is really wasting one license,
or you would have to buy the multi-language pack or acquire, get a donation
for the multi-language pack which is also more complicated
because I'm not sure that is on your list. You don't need to do all these things
under Software Assurance. Software Assurance grants you those multi-language packs directly.
You can just install them on the machine, and there are 37 different languages.
Even when you have, for example, kiosk machines in the nonprofit space
for non-English native speakers, you can pretty much offer all of the major 37 world languages
on those machines, and the complete UI of Office is switched completely to the other language.
Becky: Terrific. Thank you so much. That's great. So we talked about a lot of great benefits,
and we will answer a lot of the questions that have come in the chat in the Q&A in just a few minutes,
but first we want to go ahead and talk about the cost benefit
of whether to renew Software Assurance or to request a new donation of a Microsoft program,
since we know Software Assurance has that two-year timeline.
So we're going to bring Cameron Jones on, who's a Program Director here at Tech Sou
and works on our Microsoft Donation Program, just to talk a little bit about that.
Then I promise we'll get to a lot of your questions in the Q&A after that. So welcome, Cameron.
So welcome, Cameron.
Cameron: Hi, everyone. Thank you. One of the newest features of Software Assurance
is that it can be renewed. This is something that was added, I think, this spring for TechSou
donation recipients. We have a little information for you about what the process involves
if you want to renew your Software Assurance benefits
after the initial two-year period has expired.
Benefits can only be renewed through a Microsoft reseller.
In the United States, we have charity open licensing. In other countries,
sometimes that's not available and so organizations would go through commercial
open licensing resellers. But in the United States, we would use a charity open licensing reseller,
and those can be found on the Microsoft website, a list of those.
I'll get you a link for that in a moment. Renewals have to be completed
before the expiration date for that given product. Renewals are done on a per-product basis
or per license basis rather, and you have to renew a minimum of five licenses at a time
when you go to request that renewal. Renewals are granted for two years.
The expiration date you can find in the VLSC. That's available where you can view your licenses
and your authorization number for each of your licenses. The cost to renew is approximately a third
of the fair market value of the product under the charity reseller pricing,
so it tends to be a little bit more than the administration fee that TechSoup charges
on a per product basis, but in some cases it's worth it to go the route of renewing
rather than requesting new licenses. And I'll get into that in a moment.
In order to begin your renewal process, you need the authorization number for the product
that you wish to renew Software Assurance benefits on,
the date of the Software Assurance expiration, and a credit card number and email address.
Once you complete the process and confirm your renewal, it takes three to five business days
for that renewal to appear in Volume Licensing.
We actually went through this process here at TechSoup to test it out and see how it worked.
We went ahead and renewed the Software Assurance benefits on Office Professional Plus.
Five licenses is the minimum, so we renewed five licenses.
The price that we were quoted was $47 per license, so our total came to $235 to renew
the benefits for all five licenses. The process that we went through was we selected a reseller
from the Microsoft Open License for Charities Resellers list.
There's a link here and I believe we're providing that later in the presentation as well.
We called them up and talked to a sales representative who quoted us a price
for the renewal of the Software Assurance. We did a verbal confirmation on the phone
and gave them a credit card number and an email address. Then they followed up with an email
back to us, confirming what we had requested and gave a total.
Then we had to respond to that to say they could go ahead and charge the credit card
for the amount listed on the invoice. Sure enough, the renewal showed up in our VLSC account
three business days later, and we were all set to go.
So it was a very easy, straightforward process for us.
Now of course there is a cost difference, depending on how many licenses
you want to renew and what the given situation is.
You may want to go ahead with Software Assurance renewal,
or you may want to just request new licenses which would automatically give you another two years
of Software Assurance. Again, it depends on your situation. For the Office Pro Plus,
if we were an organization and making a cost-based decision, we would probably go ahead
and request new licenses because, first of all, our overall out-of-pocket cost is lower,
and second of all if we need to request fewer than five licenses,
then we don't have to do the renewal on all five. So some cases in which you might want to renew
Software Assurance is if there's a product that is no longer offered through the TechSoup catalog,
no longer available for requesting additional licenses, you might want to go ahead
and request Software Assurance in that case, or if you have already used
up your 50-license allotment for, say, Microsoft Office
and you need to renew those Software Assurance benefits,
then you could do it through this program.
That covers the renewal process, and I think we move onto questions now.
Becky: Great. Thank you so much, Cameron for taking the time to explain that.
Again, renewing versus just requesting a new donation of a different program
are for specific circumstances most likely, like Cameron mentioned.
So if you need that option, we wanted to make sure we explained how to do that
since it's a new benefit available. With that, we'll go ahead and jump into some questions.
We've had some great ones come in. Gregor, a lot of these are just for you,
so we'll get you back on the line.
Pamela has asked, does E-learning track the online classes that you've attended?
How do you know if you're using up your allotment or your hours of that?
Gregor: E-learning doesn't really measure the number of courses, so you have unlimited hours
or unlimited number of courses. The allotment is really the number of seats
that you're getting, or the number of user IDs that you're getting.
Becky: Great. Thank you so much. We had a question, and I'm not sure if this is one
that you can necessarily answer. Maybe Cameron can answer this.
Charlene asks, she's from libraries, and how does this work for the library donations
with the requirement that the software is only installed on patron computers,
so how does Home Use work if you have licenses that are intended for the computers
that patrons would use in a public computing center or a library setting?
Gregor: Maybe Cameron can jump in. I'm not specifically sure about this,
but I assume because the licenses you get granted get used within the library,
so you would still have a 1:1 entitlement, but entitlement to HUP would only be
for employees of the library.
Cameron: Let me clarify this. This is Cameron from TechSoup.
Libraries, as those of you on the line who are librarians know,
have a special use case for Microsoft software or donations in that the software
can only be installed on public access computers. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure
what the Home Use policy would be on that because the computers are specifically
for public access. So I assume the Home Use benefit would not apply,
but we will dig into the details on that and get that answer posted.
I guess we're doing follow-up answer posts on the forum. Is that right, Becky?
Becky is saying yes.
Becky: Yes, we will. So we'll try to follow up on that and get more details
about whether there is a Home Use ability for licenses that are intended
for public computing settings. Another question, Gregor, you can probably address this one
from Linda. She's asking, what happens if employees who use home licenses
leave the organization? What happens when that Software Assurance period expires,
and they've got it installed on their home computer?
Gregor: The answer to both is the same. The moment that they are not under license any more,
they have to remove the software from their computers. If an organization member leaves
the organization, the actual license still stays with the organization
so Home Use Program is just an expansion of that license to the home user,
but only for as long as that home user is part of the organization.
When someone leaves the organization, they're not licensed any longer.
They have to delete the software from their computer, and the same goes if it expires
and it's not renewed or you don't get a new grant for that. It's the same case.
There is no longer a Home Use license any more, so the user has to delete the software
from their computers.
Becky: Great. Thank you so much for clarifying that. We also have some questions from people
asking about will they get a notification when new software becomes available
or when new programs are released that they can upgrade to,
or do they just have to kind of watch for that themselves?
And I'm pretty sure that they just have to kind of watch for it, but let me know if I'm wrong on that.
Gregor: I don't think VLSC is at the moment sending out notifications
but with Microsoft being a rather big software company,
usually there are one or the other headline, or we try to put a couple of tv commercials out when
we have new versions of our Microsoft software, so usually you'd hear about it.
Becky: Great, and we also do. So if there are new editions or new versions of software
that are coming out that are available in the Donation Program,
if you aren't currently signed up for one of our newsletters, like By the Cu
or the New Product Alert, it's a great place to hear about what's brand new
and if that's something that you already have access to in an older version,
then jump right into your Volume Licensing Center to see if it is eligible for that upgrade.
Gregor: Yes. In general, it's always a good idea to occasionally just look in the VLSC.
Becky: Great. This is a question for Cameron. We did answer it in the chat directly,
but other people may be wondering this as well. Are the programs available
through the Donation Program here at TechSoup, are those full versions
or are these donations diminished in any way, or less valuable than the retail versions of them
because they include this Software Assurance. People are kind of wondering what's the catch.
Cameron: Oh, no. There's no catch. Absolutely no catch. The products that are distributed
through the TechSoup Microsoft Donation Program are all complete versions.
They're the same as what you would purchase commercially through any other channel.
The difference is that these are better because they come with Software Assurance.
The donations that you are receiving are open license products,
so it's just a separate type of licensing but it's the channel that Microsoft has chosen to use
for software donations. You get full, legitimate versions of the software
plus all these extra benefits that are usually mostly reserved for large corporations.
Becky: Thank you. We also had a question from somebody asking what size organization
does it make the most sense to use these Software Assurance benefits.
If you're a little, two-person office, does it make sense for you to try to access Software Assurance,
or do you need to have 20 work stations or 50 work stations. What makes the most sense?
Gregor: I would say it starts pretty much by one machine to make sense.
Not all benefits always [indistinct] equally because if you have only one office,
or even the home office if you're running a super small charity,
you have one office and that is your home office. You don't have distributive computing.
You don't have a back office serve. You don't have an exchange server.
A lot of license ability and virtualization rights wouldn't really make sense to you,
but the new version rights, just being able to upgrade to the new version
without seeking a new donation, using the latest technology, accessing E-learning,
these things make absolute sense, I would say, for any size organization.
So it starts at one desktop. It's just in a different grouping, some of the deployment benefits
and the virtualization benefits, I would say, yes, they kick in with larger organizations,
but it's not so much to size. I would say it's more the structure of the organization
that determines which benefits are most valuable. So whether you are in one geographic location,
when you have people more traveling around, working from home, different locations,
I think that determines more of what benefits are more benefit to your organization
than others, than the size.
Becky: Great. Yes, and I would agree with that, too. When you mentioned distributive organizations
earlier, when you were talking about some of the more technical benefits of Software Assurance,
I know a lot of smaller organizations might have two people in an office in one city,
and two people in an office in another city, and some of those features
that might actually be what we consider more technical might actually be really beneficial
to that organization. Obviously things like the E-learning courses, I think I would personally benefit
from doing some of those on my end. So I think any of us could benefit from those kinds of things.
We also have a question, and I'm not sure if this is something that you can address,
but Cynthia was asking that she had talked to a vendor who was trying to sell SharePoint training,
and she was told that sometimes Microsoft offers training vouchers.
Is that different from the E-learning that's available through Software Assurance?
Do you know anything about that, Gregor?
Gregor: Yes, absolutely. Software Assurance has different benefits for different types of programs,
but under "open" we don't have the training vouchers. Training vouchers,
it's a different benefit for large organization licensing under select and under platform fields,
like Enterprise Agreement. They would then entitle to actually classroom trainings,
so that's the difference. Training vouchers entitle for classroom training from a training provider.
E-learning entitles for connecting to our E-learning servers.
Becky: Thank you for addressing that. I didn't know about the vouchers,
so that was news to me. There are some questions about the two-year window
and what that means exactly. Is that from when you receive the donation?
Is that from when you get the license key? Is that from when you install it on your computer?
How does that timeline work?
Gregor: It's usually the moment you receive the donation, and again I look to Cameron to jump in
because she knows more about the actual mechanics of the charity donations.
But your licensing actually starts from the moment you receive that license,
regardless of whether you install and use the license or not.
So that's even when the two-year window starts.
Becky: We also had somebody who asked if they could upgrade from XP to Windows 8,
or is that something that all depends on the dates as well, assuming that they had acquired X
fairly recently, they would be eligible. Is that correct?
Gregor: theoretically, yes, but looking at the two-year window, it's an unlikely scenario
that you recently acquired it. What is possible is if you actually got an XP donation
back when XP was current and you always either renewed or got new SA donations
so you kept your SA active. You acquired all of the licenses, all of the upgrade licenses
of the different Windows versions throughout the evolution and just never installed them.
That is actually still possible. So then, yes, you have the upgrade right,
and here I have to say I'm not sure technically whether you can directly upgrade
from Windows XP to Windows 8. You might have to do a step-stone thing
where you have to go to Windows 7 and then to Windows 8, or you might have to reinstall.
From a licensing point, it doesn't really matter, as long as you have Windows client,
no matter what version, under Software Assurance, you are licensed to the latest version,
so there's no problem to that.
Cameron: Hi, this is Cameron. And to clarify a little bit, so XP is a product that we do still carry
and have been carrying in the TechSoup catalogue for quite a while.
So, again, to reiterate Gregor's point that if you are running XP and you've requested that
within the last two years, or if you have current Software Assurance benefits
on your operating system license, then you can go ahead and go into VLSC
and download Windows 8. The download process, from XP that upgrade process
is a little complicated, and we have some articles on our website about that and how you approach
that, but it's certainly possible. Again, it depends on whether your Software Assurance benefits
are current or not. Again, you can see the expiration date
for your Software Assurance benefit on a given license in your VLSC account.
Becky: Great. Thank you, Cameron. We also have a question, so I'm going to keep you on the line,
Cameron. We have a question about the one-time software for original install,
which is the GetGenuine program here. It would be helpful for our users to understand
what the difference is because we have upgrades that include Software Assurance,
but our GetGenuine program is that one time only thing, and it doesn't.
Can you talk a little bit about what that's used for, Cameron, and how that works?
Cameron: Sure. Windows operating system GetGenuine products are a special exception
to the rule that Microsoft is only permitted to donate upgrade products.
The GetGenuine products stem from the need for some nonprofits to be able to access
a full base operating system, and not just the upgrade.
Some of those cases are because they may have pirated software on their systems.
They may have received a donation of a used computer that has been wiped clean,
or they may be on a Home version of Windows operating system
that is not eligible for a TechSoup Windows upgrade product.
So we have the GetGenuine products, and the idea behind those is that nonprofits
should be on legitimate Microsoft operations systems. Once you get GetGenuine,
you get on a legitimate base operating system. Then you can go ahead and request the upgrades
through the TechSoup program. Does that answer the question?
Oh, additionally, so the GetGenuine products do not come with Software Assurance benefits
for that reason. They're kind of a special category of products.
The idea is that if you get on a genuine version of Microsoft Office,
then you'll be able to go ahead and get the upgrade products,
and with those you'll get Software Assurance.
Becky: Thank you for that explanation. I know when I worked at small nonprofits,
we often would go to Best Buy and buy our computers,
and they almost always had a Home version of an operating system,
and we'd always wonder why we didn't have the professional versions available to us.
So now the GetGenuine program allows that one-time request to make that transition
to a professional licensed legal version.
With that, I'm going to start us wrapping up since we only have a couple of minutes left here.
This slide here that we're still looking at shows where you can ask more questions
and continue to talk to us about this in our community forums,
so please join us there after this webinar is over to have any other questions discussed.
We have a list of some resources here that were mentioned in the webinar,
links to Software Assurance on Microsoft's site and also on the TechSoup site;
information about our Donation Program; a guide to the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center;
and information about restrictions and eligibility.
Gregor has also included some slides that we're considering the appendix here.
They go into some more detail about the Software Assurance program.
We're not going to go through them right now but we wanted to make sure that they're there
because they do talk more about some of those more technical programs
like the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack and some of those benefits.
We included them here. System Center Advisor is another one.
We want to make sure that you have all of the information that you need
to access all of these benefits that are included with your donation program.
We hope that you'll make use of them because they are there,
and they are free to you to use, provided that you meet the Software Assurance timeline
requirements and whatnot. We hope that you'll go ahead and do a little more digging around
to see what you can benefit most from at your organization.
With that, I would like to thank our speakers. Thank you so much, Gregor, for joining us
from Microsoft. Thank you, Cameron, for taking time out today
to talk to us about the Product Donation Program some, and thank you to Brenda, William
and Gretchen on the back end who helped field questions for us throughout the webinar.
Again, we hope that you'll join us in our forums to continue the discussion,
and we thank you for joining us today. Thanks so much.