Windows 7 Enterprise Licensing

Microsoft has volume licensing available to enterprises for Windows 7.

Volume licensing comes into play at five computers and allows you to make a single purchase for those licenses, sometimes financed.

The licenses do not include boxed Windows 7 software, the manuals and disks are missing—and Microsoft passes those savings on.

An optional add-on to the license is something Microsoft calls Software Assurance.

It’s a maintenance plan that includes phone support and other tools like training.

Microsoft determines the Windows 7 license based on the size and type of the enterprise, the products you need and the way you plan to use them.

There are also specific licenses geared towards industry sectors like government or education.

Microsoft has a term they use called Product Use Rights (PUR) for Windows 7 purchased through volume licensing.

Windows 7’s PUR is a per copy, per device license.

Meaning, you need to acquire a license for each device you access the product from and you can only install one copy on the device.

Existing Software Assurance customers can upgrade to Windows 7 at Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Service Center, where you can access product keys and find downloads. Click here to access it.

Pay-as-you-go Windows 7 licensing models are available for mid to large organizations. You need to be buying licenses for at least 250 desktops.

The plans are called Select Plus and Select License and are tiered to products and servers including other things. Click here to learn about them.

Microsoft provides volume activation tools for systematically deploying Windows 7 as part of the enterprise license.

Windows 7 also has quite advanced image management tools and Windows 7 will do a good job of maintaining virtual machine images for client virtualization.

These tools are included in the license.

Software Assurance licensees can get the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) as a subscription.

MDOP increases manageability and employs technologies like Application Virtualization (App-V) which turns applications into centrally managed services and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) for deployment of virtual PC images for Windows 7.

Microsoft has an eighty-page reference guide to volume licensing on their website. If you have a lot of time on your hands you can click here to read it.

They also have an automated license advisor where you can build a Windows 7 enterprise quote and get automated guidance on choosing your Windows 7 enterprise license.

Click here to access it.

Sources:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/how-to-buy.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd197314.aspx

Update 11-4-2009 *** Great article on Windows licensing from Ed Bott here***

 

Volume License customers with an existing Software Assurance license are now able to download Windows 7 RTM in English via the Volume License Service Center.

The rest of the languages for Windows 7 RTM should become available in the next few weeks.

Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available to Volume License customers with an existing Software Assurance license on August 19.

Microsoft announced that Windows 7 had hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone on July 22, 2009.

"6.1.7600.16385.090713-1255" is the final build string, meaning the build was compiled on July 13, 2009, at 12:55pm.

This is in line with the rumored RTM compilation date but it is also the day Microsoft stated that Windows 7 had not yet hit RTM.

Although the final build had been compiled, Microsoft still had to put it through testing before christening it as RTM.

Source