Businesses that want the enterprise edition of
Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista operating system will have to
sign up to the company’s Software Assurance (SA) licensing
programme.
SA was introduced in 2001 and encourages users to pay an annual
fee to use Microsoft software rather than buying licences outright.
SA includes upgrades and other support services, but has been
criticised by some businesses for being complicated and potentially
more expensive that standard software licensing.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced seven new enhancements to support
and services in the SA programme, to encourage more firms to sign
up. It has also confirmed that the enterprise edition of Windows
Vista will only be available to SA subscribers.
Although the differences in the feature set between the standard
and Enterprise editions are still not clear, the move is bound to
anger some firms fearful that they could be forced to sign up to
SA.
Windows Vista will be commercially available towards the end of
2006.