Microsoft Licensing can be flipping confusing. I’ll break down our decisions here because it took an long time to work out what to do. Firstly if you’ve got a computer running Windows, it needs an OEM Licence – the manufactorer needs to licence the machine when they sell it to you. I’m not going to go into using Linux, it gets complicated. If you use it on a network and it connects to a Server, then you need a CAL (Client Access Licence). You can get CALS for Windows Server, Exchange (Email), Sharepoint (Weby thingy) and probably SQL but I really dont want to think about that.
When my school moved to Windows 7, they bought OEM licences for the machines, and got a volume licence for Office 2007. Windows Server was bought somewhat separately with and SQL Server licence and Exchange 2007.
The problem with OEM licencing is it works a treat if you never change your computers in any way at all ever. If you want to do anything to make your life eaiser, like Imaging or need to make a massive change to the desktop machines, this causes lots of heartache because you need to ring Microsoft and go through the re-activation process for each machine. We’ve got 170, it’d take days to do that.
Enter EES to the rescue. It provides volume licensing for Windows 7 Enterprise, Office 2010 and lots of nice CALS. It also comes with at least 2 direct support requests from microsoft and a single MSDNAA Account.
The Microsoft Developer Network is Microsoft’s way of sharing pretty much every tool they’ve ever made for developers to play with. Everything from Visio to Windows 3.11 to their Point of Sale products and every possible Server tool imaginable. The volume of activations they provide for each tool is vast – I’ve got 500 MAK activations for Microsoft Vista alone.