By Warwick Ashford
20 August 2008
Microsoft has changed software licensing and technical support for its server applications to make it easier to get the benefits of server virtualisation.
Licensing agreements for 41 server applications will now allow businesses to move applications from one server in a server farm to another as required instead of only once every 90 days under previous reassignment rules.
Neil Sanderson, Microsoft¹s UK product manager for virtualisation and management said it had been trying to to evolve licensing as part of its virtualisation strategy.
“We’ve been adapting it to what customers are telling us they are looking to use virtualisation,” he said.
Sanderson said in the past businesses did not need ability to move licenses around as much as they are now looking to do and as much as they are likely in future.
Applications affected by the changes include the enterprise edition of SQL Server 2008, the standard and enterprise versions of Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft System Center products.
In another development, Microsoft is extending technical support for 31 server applications deployed on its hypervisor or any third party validated virtualisation platform.
Participants in the server virtualisation validation programme (SVVP) include VMWare, Cisco, Citrix, Novell, Virtual Iron Software and Sun Microsystems.
It enables suppliers to test and validate its software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions.
Sanderson said the licensing and support announcements were part of Microsoft¹s long term strategy aimed at removing the barriers to virtualisation.
Simon Aron, managing director at Eurodata Systems said Microsoft is trying to drive adoption of its virtualisation by making it less costly and complicated to implement.
He said Microsoft it is about to release a cross platform virtualisation management tool as well as several applications.
“They want to lead the market in virtualisation and believe they can virtualise the core applications that fit highest in the market like Exchange and SQL,² he said.
