Microsoft 'Steps Up' with More Flexible Windows Licensing

by Alex Woodie

Growing Windows shops that need to upgrade their server software, but don't want to break the bank doing it, will be glad to hear that Microsoft has made its "Step Up" licensing program permanent. Under the Step Up program, which was originally launched with a limited 12-month lifetime, about a year ago, customers moving from standard to enterprise versions of Windows programs don't have to pay the full cost of the enterprise version, which they previously had to pay.

When Microsoft unveiled its new Software Assurance licensing program, in 2002, one of the things that customers were angry about was that the company provided no easy way to upgrade from standard editions of a product to the enterprise or professional version during the two- or three-year course of the Software Assurance agreement. In addition to the fact that they had no guarantees that Microsoft would actually deliver a new release of their software over the two- or three-year Software Assurance contract (which was, and still is, the primary beef with the Software Assurance program), users were upset at the prospect of shelling out full list price for the professional or enterprise version when upgrading from a standard edition program. Any investment these customers made in the standard edition went for naught. Back to square one, as the saying goes.

This can amount to a lot of money for midsized shops looking to bolster their core IT building blocks with more feature-rich versions of Windows, SQL Server, Exchange, and Commerce Server, let alone the desktop Office suite, which was the original focus of the Step Up program. Customers shouldn't be penalized for growing and wanting to buy more of Microsoft's software, though that is effectively what the policy did.

But no more. On September 1, 2003, Microsoft introduced its Step Up plan, which allowed customers under Software Assurance, Enterprise Agreement, Select License, or Open License Value contracts to pay only the difference in price between the standard and enterprise or professional edition of their product to get the upgrade.

The Step Up program was originally scheduled to expire on August 31, 2003, but Microsoft wisely extended it. The Step Up program is now a permanent fixture, for the time being anyway.

Microsoft has also expanded the list of products available for upgrade under the Step Up program, and there are more Windows server components, we are told. Among the Windows server stack products available for upgrades under Step Up are BizTalk Server, CommerceServer, Content Management Server, Exchange Server, Speech Server, SQL Server, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Small Business Server.

You can get more information on Step Up and other licensing questions from a new Web site Microsoft launched recently that's dedicated to licensing issues: http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com.