The Open License Value Program focuses on meeting the needs of corporate customers with 5 to 250 PCs by allowing you to stay current on the latest technology and spread payments over a three-year period. It allows you to easily track your license purchases and budget for future purchases, and it includes Software Assurance with each license.

Benefits

• Simplify administration, usage and management of software and licenses.

• Reduce your initial capital requirement and easily plan your IT budget when you spread payments across the term of your agreement.

• Ensure that you will always be equipped with the latest technology, as Software Assurance is included with every license for updates for the term of the agreement.

• Standardize your licenses for additional savings and reduced support costs when you choose the Company-wide Option.

How it Works:

• An Open License Value Authorization Number is valid for three years.

• Minimum initial order to obtain an Authorization Number is five licenses.

• Every license includes Software Assurance.

• SA expires when the Authorization Number expires, regardless of the point during the term of the agreement in which it was purchased.

Open Value Company-Wide Option

The Company-wide option under Open License Value offers additional savings and a single price per desktop to organizations that want to standardize all their desktops on one or more Microsoft Enterprise Products and to spread payments annually. With the Company-wide option, you receive additional savings by electing to license all qualifying desktops with one or two Enterprise Products. You can also realize deeper savings by standardizing on the Desktop Professional Platform, which includes all three Enterprise Products as a group. Having all your desktops on one platform may help reduce costs associated with software acquisition, deployment and license management.

Enterprise Products Under Open Value

• Microsoft Office Professional

• Microsoft Windows Professional Desktop Operating System Upgrade

• Microsoft Core CAL - includes CALs for Windows Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Exchange Server and Systems Management Server

Software Assurance Benefits

In addition to new version rights and the ability to spread payments, SA offers Open License Value customers the following benefits:

• Windows Vista Enterprise and Virtual PC Express - Windows Vista Enterprise licenses help you to maximize your desktop investments with powerful tools and technologies that help reduce IT costs and the complexity of managing corporate PCs. It helps protect sensitive data and intellectual property on lost or stolen PCs. It also includes integration of all worldwide Windows languages (MUI), which helps reduce the cost of managing a single, global system image for your PC hardware. Virtual PC Express is a feature of Windows Vista Enterprise that lets you run legacy applications on legacy operating systems in a single, virtual machine.

• Training Vouchers - Training vouchers offer training on select Microsoft courses from Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions. More than 1,600 learning partners worldwide offer official Microsoft instructor-led, online and self-paced courses and consultative learning services to help you improve productivity and reduce training costs.

• eLearning - Help your users to become educated on new products. Microsoft's eLearning delivers a comprehensive student experience, using streaming audio and video software demonstrations, hands-on exercises and courses designed by professional instructors. Employees can take interactive modules and tutorials on various applications at any time at their own computer, even offline.

• Home Use Program - Increase employee productivity and ensure compatibility between documents created at work and at home when you grant your employees the rights to Microsoft Office System products to install on home computers for personal and business needs.

• 24 X 7 Problem Resolution Support - Enjoy phone support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for business-critical outages on all Microsoft-supported products including all server editions, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office applications. Phone support includes Microsoft server, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office System products and editions, even if the specific license requiring support does not have Software Assurance coverage. Product must be in mainstream phase of the product lifecycle and eligible for SA Benefits. Visual Studio, Developer editions of Server, or Home and Entertainment products not included. SA awarded incidents can be converted to Premier support incidents which allows you to receive Premier service levels. In addition, server products covered by Software Assurance receive unlimited web support.

• SA Exchange Server Applications - Block unwanted junk email and help your employees work more productively. SA Exchange Server Applications includes Exchange Server-based tools and technologies as well as Intelligent Message Filter to combat the influx of unsolicited commercial email.

• Cold Server Backup for Disaster Recovery - Protect valuable data without buying a new license. Software Assurance grants you the right to install server software on a cold server for the purpose of disaster recovery in the event of an emergency.

• TechNet Plus Managed Newsgroups and Subscription Media - Increase your efficiency for finding solutions. IT professionals have access to TechNet Plus Subscription content, featuring resources such as the knowledge base, utilities, drivers and how-to articles to help them succeed. The TechNet Plus Subscription Media also includes access to beta release candidate software and evaluation copies of the latest applications.

• Extended Lifecycle Hotfix Support - Request hotfixes for products in the Extended Lifecycle Support without signing up or paying an initial fee prior to determining a need. This means you do not pay for extended support unless hotfixes are required. As always, security fixes are automatically guaranteed.

• Information Work Solution Services - Offers one and two-day workshops designed to help Open Value customers get more from their productivity applications and more fully leverage their IT infrastructure. The Information Work Value Discovery Workshop is designed to help business decision makers develop a prioritized list of projects that can have the greatest impact on and the lowest risk to their business. The Information Work Architecture Design Session is a two-day workshop that gives IT staff and technical decision makers an understanding of the architecture required to implement the highest-value projects.

If you select the Open Value Company-Wide Option, the following additional benefits will be available to you.

• Windows Pre-Installation Environment - Windows PE is a powerful deployment tool that streamlines the installation and troubleshooting process, eases the administrative burden and makes IT professionals more productive.
• Employee Purchase Program - Provide discounts to your employees on dozens of Microsoft products for their personal use. Employees can get the flexibility of using the same software at home that they use at work, as well as save money on great software products for home management and entertainment. Best of all, your organization is not responsible for the end-user’s compliance – the end-user license agreement is between the end-user and Microsoft.
• Corporate Error Reporting - Control deployment of fixes and resolutions. Microsoft Corporate Error Reporting gives your IT professionals a clear and easy way to monitor and review error information. It allows applications and the operating system to collect and report on crashes in the system, and gives IT staff the ability to control the types of reports sent to Microsoft.

To Enroll in Open License Value

Contact your dedicated SHI Account Executive at 888-764-8888 for pricing and further information. Found out how your organization can benefit from Microsoft's Open License Value Program.