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Operational Microsoft questions

Hi everyone,

I want to kindly request your support for the following Microsoft topics:

At the beginning of this week we have been at a customer and created some licenses. Doing this we found some questions which we could not answer on our own and would love to have your help with that.

  1. They use an “Enterprise CAL Suite” which contains some applications. As we used the provided SKU we found that an SKU for this cal suite already existed so we used this as the base for the license. Also we figured out that not all products have been covered so we added the missing ones (usually the “Installation and CAL” applications)…
    • How you can build a license for a SUITE with SA up to date but the included products changed along the years?
    • From our understanding a Suite should allow the buyer to install each containing product times the amount of bought licenses à is this correct? We figured out after we added some Applications the consumption have been summarized and not calculated for each application… did we got the idea wrong?
    • We also used an MLS and imported it… the importer have been created each product as a single application but not as a suite… which way would be the correct way?
    • Where is the difference when adding new applications to the license when it comes for “installation” or “Installation and CAL” or only “CAL”?
  2. How to proceed with creating licenses for multiple purchases of the same products with different SA expiration date? What contract do you connect first for the maintenance? How do you split the licenses afterwards based on their SA expiration date?
  3. What do you do with the licenses that you only find SA for without the “base software” purchases?
    • They have bought Windows OS (e.g. XP) in an OEM purchase and never tracked the “license keys” but later bought only “update licenses” or “SA” for the OS…
    • Should we just create a License with software and increase the amount of available licenses manually?
    • What would be the “best practice” on a case like this?
  4. How do you create the license if the metric of the product changed over the years (e.g. they transformed Device into user metric and they bought processor licenses in 2011 and in 2014 migrated to core with a ratio of 1:4
    • What would be the “best practice” on a case like this?
  5. How to proceed with the products that were stand alone and afterwards included in a Suite?

  Thank you for your help in advance.

 

(1) Reply
Natalie
By Level 7 Flexeran
Level 7 Flexeran

Hi @daniela_vru ,

1. If you are finding that our SKU library or other content has errors or missing applications, please submit a support case. Our Content team works hard to keep everything up to date but sometimes items can be missed.

Typically for Microsoft, from what I understand, suites need to be installed on the same device - suite components can't be split across devices. 

2. For that use case, rather than the license inheriting SA end dates from the contract, I might just have the SA driven by the maintenance expiration dates. A single license can handle multiple SA end dates so long as everything else remains the same (covered products, use rights, etc.). If some of the licenses come off SA, the POs are visible in the license so that they can be moved to a license without SA. 

3. I would actually make a fake PO for the base license quantity so then SA could be processed "as normal". 

4. If at all possible, use a baseline that's more recent than the metric changes so that Microsoft handles the conversion natively. 

5. Baseline is probably the way to go here as well instead of original purchase history. 

Have you read the SLO Practice Guide and Microsoft Practice Guide, in the Learning Center? I think they will help here. 

https://learn.flexera.com/best-practices-for-software-license-optimization-with-flexnet-manager?next=%2Fbest-practices-for-software-license-optimization-with-flexnet-manager%2F306402

 

 

Natalie Overstreet Lias
Senior Product Manager
I don’t speak for Flexera, and we should all be grateful for that