Organisations currently migrating to Windows 2000 could face a
nasty shock under Microsoft's new licensing regime.
Microsoft UK licensing manager, Duncan Reid told CW360 that the
company will cut off cheap upgrade paths from the operating system
next summer, even though Windows 2000 was launched 18 months ago.
He said: "Windows 2000 will be considered a current product until
July 2002."
After this time, Reid added, users will have to pay a full upgrade
fee if they wish to migrate to the next Microsoft operating system,
such as Windows XP.
Meanwhile anger continues to grow about Microsoft's controversial
changes to its licensing regime and the new Software Assurance
programme, despite last week's climbdown on the date of the
deadline for discounted upgrades.
Some users, angry that they face a 25% a year price hike, told
CW360 that they will start looking at alternatives to Microsoft
products.
One user, the head of technology at a travel Web site said that his
company bought Microsoft Small Business Server a year ago as a
cheap way of getting NT Server and Exchange Server. Although
limited to 50 users, he understood the package had an upgrade path
to the full Back Office suite. "Now there is no upgrade path and
Microsoft has discontinued the Back Office bundle," he told
CW360.
The impact on his company, he said, was significant. When the
organisation reaches 51 users or more on the system, it will have
to purchase new copies of Windows 2000 Server and Exchange 2000,
together with client access licences (CALS) for each user, at a
total cost of £8,500. "This is double what it would have cost to
upgrade to BackOffice 2000." Since the company has not grown to 51
users yet, he added: "We've got time to look at migrating to Linux
and a cheaper groupware product."
Another complaint came from Sue Beesley, a commercial director at
Network Defence, an IT security firm. She said her company quite
frequently gets involved in selling and building Microsoft servers.
This month she is looking to price a Windows 2000 licence for a
customer site with over 500 users.
"We did not know about the licensing issue until very recently,"
Beesley told CW360. "When we correlated the cost of the licence
between two distributors and checked with Microsoft we were quoted
a 50% charge [for Microsoft's Software Assurance subscription]."
A standard Microsoft client access licence at her client's site for
Exchange 2000 would cost just under £30,000, said Beesley. "To buy
the software with the two year Software Assurance is almost
£45,000," she added.
Microsoft's Reid acknowledged that users will have to pay between
25% and 29% per year for their Software Assurance subscription. He
said the benefit of the programme is that users would be able to
upgrade to new releases of Microsoft software for free.
But, Beesley pointed out, paying 50% more for a two-year
subscription is simply not cost effective. "Most users don't
upgrade their software over two years. We have clients running NT
and a few who have just moved to Windows 2000."