‘Microsoft Licensing is a Problem for all Businesses’

Intrado’s Scott Paul on how businesses can be savvier with licensing

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‘Microsoft Licensing is a Problem for all Businesses’
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Published: June 25, 2021

Tom Wright

Managing Editor

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. 

However, he explained that a detailed look at what was being used in the organisation revealed that many of the E5 features, such as advanced security, were not being used.   

Therefore, it made sense to drop down to a cheaper licence than E5 and pay for voice calling separately. 

This can make billing more complicated – particularly around live events, audio conferencing and international calls – but ultimately, with the help of a partner that understands licensing and billing, can save businesses money. 

“We have been able to eliminate over-licensing and implement other improvements that reduce IT spend by 10-50 percent,” Paul said. 

Getting Licensing Right

Ultimately, the aim is to make sure that employees have the right assets to be productive while ensuring the business isn’t paying for tools and services it doesn’t need. 

To reach this point, businesses first need to establish visibility of the licences they already have. 

“This might sound obvious, but the complexity makes it surprisingly likely that an organisation is either unaware of, or confused, about the products it owns,” Paul said. 

“The product naming approach that Microsoft has chosen to go with has made the job a little bit more difficult for customers to understand what bundle they have.” 

Once a business has done this, they need to establish how they want their licensing to benefit their employees and help them be productive. 

Paul said that this will often mean selecting different licences for different employees, despite this often making the financial calculations harder. 

Crucially, he stressed that it’s important for a business to constantly assess their licensing environment because their demands will change as employees come and go, and new products are launched. 

“It is really more of a journey and a process than a destination,” he said. 

“We’ll get it right today, but the process by which you get there needs to be repeated as Microsoft evolves its offering and as organisations change themselves”

 

 

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