Microsoft Licence Price Comparison

[Muffin`]

Hi,

To get to the point does this look cheap? Have you seen cheaper?

Option 1: OVS

x80 Office Professional, Licence + Software Assurance, 1 Year @ £10,400 - £130 p/u
x80 Windows Vista Business, Licence + Software Assurance, 1 Year w/Vis Enterprise @ £4,000 - £50 p/u
x20 Project, Licence + Software Assurance, 1 Year @ £3,520 - £176 p/u
x10 Visio Standard, Licence + Software Assurance, 1 Year @ £750 - £75 p/u

Total - £18,670.00



Option Two: OVS

x80 Desktop Professional Suite, Licence + Software Assurance, 1 Year @ £15,600 - £195 p/u
(Includes: Office Family, Windows Family, Core CAL (Windows CAL, Exchange CAL, SMS CAL, SharePoint CAL)
x20 Project, Licence + Software Assurance, 1 Year @ £3,520 - £176 p/u
x10 Visio Standard, Licence + Software Assurance, 1 Year @ £750 - £75 p/u

Total - £19,870.00



Option Three: OLP

x80 Office Professional, Win32, English, Licence + Software Assurance @ £44,422 - £555 p/u
x80 Windows Vista Business, English, Licence + Software Assurance, w/VisEnterprise @ £17,553 - £219 p/u
x20 Project Standard, Win32, English Licence + Software Assurance @ £11,496 - £574
x10 Visio Standard, Win32, English Licence + Software Assurance @ £2,444 - £244

Total £75,917.20



Option one strikes me as the best deal, as far as I know the OVS license allows us to purchase the 20 projects and 80 offices we have now and then when we get 20 more people we only pay for those people at the end of the year instead of straight away. It does require trust but were by the book here.

What is the advantage of option two? What is Office Family? We do use SharePoint and Terminal Services can it really be of any advantage?

And why is the third option so expensive? What does that actually give us more over the OVS license?

 

[stoofa]

With OLP you are buying the licenses and they are yours for ever more.
So for example your 80x Office licenses are good forever - they never expire.

With OVS you are effectively renting the software over 3 years.
Over your 3 years you will pay an annual amount for the licenses.
At the end of the 3 years you have 3 options:

1. Purchase perpetual licenses (OLP)
2. Remove all the software
3. Renew the agreement for another 3 years.

Software assurance is actually built into OVS - so the fact your prices say "1yr Software Assurance" would lead me to believe the prices you have are the "per year" prices.

So your option 1 will cost you £56k over the 3yrs
Option 2 will cost you £59.5k over the 3yrs
Whereas Option 3 is £76k for ever.

 

[Muffin`]

Thats a great clarification, thanks.

Of course the final option lies with the boss - but I'm gonna print that off and learn the lines!

 

[stoofa]

Don't forget to factor in if you like to run the latest versions of applications or not.

With the 2 OVS options you will have Software Assurance for the full 3yrs that you sign-up for.
So if within those 3 years we see, for example Office 2009 then you'll be able to upgrade everyone to that version totally free of charge.
Sams goes for Vista, Visio & Project - any updates within the next 3yrs and you'll be able to upgrade for free.

With the OLP you will buy an initial Software Assurance (1-3 yrs) but once that ends that is it.
So you'll be entitled to upgrade your licenses for free within your SA period.
However once the SA period is up then your licenses for ever more will be stuck at that version.
So for example they release Office 2009, you upgrade to it, then your SA runs out.
The OLP license will be for Office 2009 and that is it - no more free upgrades.

As MS removed Upgrade Licenses a few years ago now you wouldn't even be able to upgrade your OLP licenses in the future.
So...

You pay £76k now and you buy all those licenses and they are yours forever.
There is an upgrade within your SA period and your licenses get a free upgrade.
At the end of your SA period the licenses you have will basically become "locked" to the version you currently have as you can't extended SA and you can't buy Upgrade Licenses.
So you could then find in say 5yrs time you'll have to buy a load of OLP licenses again - costing you another £76k.

So with OLP you always know where you are.
You get the latest versions now, you can keep on using the latest versions for 3 years.
Then in 3 years time you can sign up to another agreement and continue.

With OLP you spend a load up front now and then once SA has run out and you want to upgrade to a newer version you "in effect" start all over again.

 

[stoofa]

With regards your second question - the main difference between Option 1 & Option 2 as far as I can see is the inclusion of the "Core Client Access License".
This basically means each of your 80 users will have a CAL for:

Windows Server
Exchange Server
SMS
SharePoint
Terminal Server

I'd say if you use for example Windows servers, Exchange and SharePoint it would be worth the extra investment.
If your mail system isn't exchange then just buying Windows Server CALs would probably be cheaper.

 

[Muffin`]

That’s brilliantly explained, thank you very much.