Microsoft licensing has never been the simplest concept for businesses to get their heads around.
But when you consider the relentless migration to Microsoft Teams and the fact that Microsoft itself is still undergoing a transformation, you can forgive organisations for potentially not having the right licensing set-up.
In fact, most businesses have probably not got it spot-on, according to Microsoft partner Intrado.
Scott Paul, Senior Director of Strategic Business Development at Intrado, told UC Today that, in such a complex environment, it’s difficult for businesses to optimise their licensing strategy.
“Microsoft is in the middle of a transformation that will take several more years to complete,” he said.
“In a cloud-first world, customers and partners have to rethink fundamental concepts like ownership and value.
“The explosion of cloud technologies means huge catalogues of subscription-based products are coming to market. Just as an example, the Microsoft Cloud Services catalogue held just a couple of dozen product codes when Office 365 first launched, today has more than 1,000 different products.
“It’s not always easy to directly measure the cost of unrealised value and inefficiency in cloud licensing, but at Intrado we see strong evidence that it’s at least a minor issue for every single cloud customer. When we analyse Microsoft licensing in real-world situations, we’re able to consistently return recommendations that save customers money”
The licensing challenge is made no simpler by the fact that there are multiple ways to buy the same products, often depending on the size of the end-user organisation, as well as different ways of customers transacting – either with Microsoft directly or through channel partners.
For Teams, this is complicated further because there are dozens of products at different price points that come with Teams bundled in.
“Fortunately, for any individual organisation, there are only really around a dozen products that matter as a vehicle for gaining access to Teams,” Paul said.
“So, the licensing part of it is manageable and there are a lot of partners who’ve been navigating these waters for many years now.”
The benefits of optimising licences can vary and are not restricted to cost savings – although cost savings are likely for many businesses.
Benefits could, for example, be saving in one area in order to invest in another, or better utilising an asset that a business didn’t realise it was already paying for.
Paul gave the example of a business with an E5 licence that uses Teams as a collaboration tool but is now looking to bring in voice capabilities.
E5 includes Teams billings capabilities so a natural step would be to add a Teams calling plan on top and pay the extra money per month.
