A Microsoft Volume Licensing Expert Answers your Burning Questions on Licensing the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

Microsoft VDI offers the ability to rapidly and securely deploy desktops from a data center to users. IT support teams can manage desktops centrally, and VDI can help improve security by centralizing users’ data. VDI also gives end users the flexibility they need to access their work desktops from almost any device that has a reliable network connection.

Louise Ulrick, a UK-based licensing consultant and trainer, has relished taking the opportunity to answer some of your thornier questions on the licensing of VDI. She first began running licensing training courses all the way back in 1995.  Today, Louise continues to love licensing and works all over the world on behalf of Microsoft.

A Microsoft Volume Licensing Expert Answers your Burning Questions on Using Microsoft Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) Licenses.

Thanks to a large response we received to the VDI licensing mail bag, Louise Ulrick, a UK-based licensing consultant and trainer, is following up on that post with a focus on VDA licensing—another useful way Microsoft customers can license virtual desktop scenarios. Louise’s experience spans three decades; she began running licensing training courses all the way back in 1995.  Today, Louise continues to love licensing and works all over the world on behalf of Microsoft.

Microsoft VDA licensing can extend the value of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure by giving additional flexibility for users in terms of where they work and what device they choose to use to access their corporate desktops.  Businesses that want, for example, to provide corporate desktops to contractors, or those who are exploring bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scenarios can really benefit from choosing this licensing option.

From virtualization, device proliferation and the consumerization of IT, managing an enterprise’s IT inventory is becoming increasingly complex and time consuming.  But it’s a task of significant importance, as organizations want to take advantage of every software license they hold, and manage the updates, support and service that are attendant.  Getting an accurate count on software licenses and assets can be difficult.  Inventory can consume people resources, time and budget, and even then it leaves many software procurement teams with an “educated guess” on what they need to buy or what they no longer need.

To that end, customers have asked us to help them lower the cost of managing their software licenses. We have responded by providing more robust SAM Services, in addition to free tools such as the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit

Today, Microsoft is taking its efforts a step further by announcing plans to implement the ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009 standard for software identification tags.  These SWID tags are simple XML files embedded in the software that provide a universal method for IT departments to track and manage the software running in their respective IT environments.

This is article four of a four part series of blog posts describing the many benefits of Software Assurance.

Following on our previous article about Software Assurance (SA), which described Microsoft’s more traditional SA benefits, we thought it would be a good timing to highlight one of the more specialized benefits within SA; the Spread Payment benefit.

Widely viewed as an essential ingredient for maximizing the value of Microsoft volume licensing, purchases Software Assurance has been a part of Microsoft’s licensing offerings since 2001.  Over time the program has expanded significantly to encapsulate twenty  different benefits. Complimentary to other categories of SA benefits such as new version rights, deployment planning, training and support, the Spread Payment option has been an important and integral part of Software Assurance from the initial roll out of the program.

Now that we’re well into 2011 and kicking off Microsoft’s new 2012 fiscal year with the Worldwide Partner Conference, we continue to hear that for many companies, this is the year they’ve resolved to move some or all of their applications to the cloud. As the General Manager of Microsoft’s Worldwide Licensing Programs, my ‘what the cloud means to me’ story looks slightly different from my Microsoft engineering or marketing colleagues.