Microsoft has changed the software licensing and technical
support for its server applications to make it easier to get
the benefits of server virtualisation.
Licensing agreements for 41 server applications will now allow
businesses to move applications from one server to another as
required. This is instead of only once every 90 days under previous
reassignment rules.
Neil Sanderson, Microsoft's UK product manager for
virtualisation and management, said: "We've been trying to evolve
our licensing as part of our
virtualisation strategy over time and we've been adapting it to
what customers are telling us."
Virtualisation enables businesses to host multiple servers on
single hardware appliances and enables them to move applications
around to use server space efficiently. Sanderson said in the past
businesses did not need to move licenses around as much.
Applications affected by the changes include the enterprise
edition of SQL Server 2008, the standard and enterprise versions of
Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and
Microsoft System Center products.
Microsoft has also announced it is extending technical support
for 31 server applications on virtualisation software from third
party suppliers including VMWare, Cisco, Citrix, Novell, Virtual
Iron Software and Sun Microsystems.
These are all members of Microsoft's Server Virtualisation
Validation Program announced in June 2008 that enables suppliers to
test and validate its software to run
Windows Server 2008 and previous versions.
Sanderson said the licensing and support announcements were part
of Microsoft's long-term strategy to ease virtualisation.
Simon Aron, managing director of IT service provider Eurodata
systems, said Microsoft is trying to make virtualisation less
costly and complicated.
He said Microsoft is encouraging virtualisation because it is
about to release a cross-platform virtualisation management tool as
well as several applications suited to the virtualisation
environment.
"They want to lead the market in virtualisation and believe they
can virtualise the core applications that fit highest in the
market, like Exchange and SQL," he said.