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Microsoft's licences to complicated - let IBM help you.

There is an interesting story on slashdot pointing to the complex Microsoft licensing model and Steve Ballmer's statement not to change that anytime soon. One nice snippet from Steve:" Customers always find an approach which pays us less money". IBM is helping customers exactly do do that. Our Project Liberate helps to minimise Microsoft software cost without breaking compliance. Now we only need to simplify our own licences, but that might come soon.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 05 October 2009 | Comments (4) | categories: Software

Comments

posted by D Lynch on Tuesday 06 October 2009 AD:
IBM is no piker when it comes to obfuscation and complication of licensing, aka Domino and PVU's. We literally have a CPA to work with vendors like IBM, and even then, it's a complicated mess of PVU's and such, that are neither intuitive nor easy to plan for or around. There is a built-in disincentive in the IBM method, that essentially penalizes one for running on faster/better hardware, which of course any Domino admin will tell you is critical to better stability. I can run domino on old hw and save #, and provide a crappy user experience for less money (and less satisfied IBM customer less willing to herald the benefits of your product) vs running on newer/faster/better with a better user experience. I do not have the IBM decoder ring to figure that out beyond the fact that IBM generates more revenue that way.
posted by Jonathan Wong on Tuesday 06 October 2009 AD:
Do you know if there are any similar programs that helps to minimize IBM software cost without breaking compliance also?
posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Tuesday 06 October 2009 AD:
@Jonathan: you might want to ask your competitive team about that. It could be one item on Microsoft's sales score card, just above the number of Notes accounts to be taken out to get your annual bonus.
posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Tuesday 06 October 2009 AD:
Hi Daniel,
thx for stopping by. Yep PVU can be confusing at times. Little secret here: we have a CIO licence type where you only pay for the number of users you have and can run as many servers on whatever hardware you desire. The other confusing part are all the different licences you can buy around Notes and Domino, but that will be fixed soon. And yes IBM isn't a charity.
stw