Microsoft confusing licensing...

DrJohnZoidberg

DrJohnZoidberg

Honorary Master
Joined
Jul 24, 2006
Messages
27,988
Reaction score
7,445
Location
Table View
I'm setting up some new PC's and decided to go with Office 365.

Now these PC's are shared PC's that are used for customer support and multiple users login to these machines. These users do not require any access to any of these apps outside of the office.

What licenses do I need for this? For the life of me I cannot find out how to do this as the regular licenses only seem to be per-user.
 
Office 365 licensing is per user only
Office 2013 licensing is per device only

Either you need to assign each user a O365 license or you need to buy a copy of Office 2013 for each machine
 
grim said:
Office 365 licensing is per user only
Office 2013 licensing is per device only

Either you need to assign each user a O365 license or you need to buy a copy of Office 2013 for each machine
Click to expand...

I'm still confused.

According to this link, Office 2013 is also just one user:

Office Professional 2013

The latest Office applications—Word 2013, Excel 2013, PowerPoint 2013, Outlook 2013, OneNote 2013, Access 2013, Publisher 2013
One user, one PC
Transferable license*
Commercial use rights
Click to expand...
 
office 365 is a "subscription online service" charge per user and one user can use up to 5 devices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_365

Office 2013 is software that you install on the device and is only to be installed in one device (unless you have volume licencing or an other type of agreement).

If you are installing more than 5 PC, you can get a Volume Licence for Office, that is supposed to be cheaper than buy 5 office boxes in makro.

With Volume licencing is supposed that you can get upgrades and downgrades on the same licence. Also you can pay once off or you can arrange "monthly payments.
 
Can't find it now but one of the MS Twitter accounts tweeted about this last week.

Also your link is to the OEM site, I suspect the licensing terms are different for OEM vs retail.
 
Why does it have to be so fscking complicated? The only reason MS still makes money is because people are forced to use their OS, if they didn't hold this card they would have died a long time ago.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Why does it have to be so fscking complicated? The only reason MS still makes money is because people are forced to use their OS, if they didn't hold this card they would have died a long time ago.
Click to expand...

It's your company policy to use MS and its applications, you can easily go open-source all depends on the requirements, should you still be unhappy why not develop an OS? Really don't know why people always go down on MS, it's your decision to use it and nobodies else.

The licencing isn’t complicated, the best advice is to contact MS or an MS partner whom will correctly advise you. Volume licencing will go either per user or per device, retail is already mentioned within this thread and so is OEM.

Depending on your size, volume licencing will be better since it is manageable and per licence controllable.

Currently our organisation stopped deploying MS and Google and other related products/services due to uncertainty surrounding POPI, until we know what is going on exactly.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
It's your company policy to use MS and its applications, you can easily go open-source all depends on the requirements, should you still be unhappy why not develop an OS? Really don't know why people always go down on MS, it's your decision to use it and nobodies else.

The licencing isn’t complicated, the best advice is to contact MS or an MS partner whom will correctly advise you. Volume licencing will go either per user or per device, retail is already mentioned within this thread and so is OEM.

Depending on your size, volume licencing will be better since it is manageable and per licence controllable.

Currently our organisation stopped deploying MS and Google and other related products/services due to uncertainty surrounding POPI, until we know what is going on exactly.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I'm not in charge to change company policy, if so we all would have been using open source software.

And licensing is complicated with MS. If it wasn't I wouldn't be on a forum asking people how it works.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Unfortunately I'm not in charge to change company policy, if so we all would have been using open source software.

And licensing is complicated with MS. If it wasn't I wouldn't be on a forum asking people how it works.
Click to expand...

I understand, but I have to protect them…

Anyhow, going the 2013 route will only include one package per pc, you cannot install on more than one pc per package. The change however is that 2013 allows multiple accounts.

They want the users to move over to 365, which I currently do not support in regard with our change in law.
 
Don't you get a certificate in MS License understanding? That's how crazy it is.
 
Fudzy said:
Don't you get a certificate in MS License understanding? That's how crazy it is.
Click to expand...

You actually do need this since as a reseller / partner you represent MS, thus you need to understand the products, services and users (sales training) etc. Also each location have policies, so each market is not similarly approached and supported. Furthermore this includes the capacity, knowledge etc.

Not crazy, ethical.
 
You think this is bad... wait till you get to having to buy server licenses... oh gawd they are trying to kill us with SQL :(
 
I've wasted basically a whole day just trying to figure this out. I'm happy with the Office 365 subscriptions for our staff that have dedicated machines but it doesn't look like there is an option for a subscription service (monthly payments) for a per-device licensing agreement.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
I've wasted basically a whole day just trying to figure this out. I'm happy with the Office 365 subscriptions for our staff that have dedicated machines but it doesn't look like there is an option for a subscription service (monthly payments) for a per-device licensing agreement.
Click to expand...

Only per user, except should you want to share user logins... that will include all services (like email).
 
MightyQuin said:
So then what are you still confused about?

For each machine that you need a user to utelise yMS Office tool, you need a license.
Click to expand...

One thing that they do not state is that the licence per device/per user allows multiple accounts.

In regard with 2013.
 
MightyQuin said:
So then what are you still confused about?

For each machine that you need a user to utelise yMS Office tool, you need a license.
Click to expand...

Not with Office 365. You can only use one license per user, they in turn though can use it on five devices.

You have to purchase a full version of Office 2013 it seems to have users share it, and even with that I was getting conflicting information (but I think I have it now).
 
I don't see why it's confusing.

Per user licensing means each users "owns" a license that they can use on up to 5 different devices.

Per device licensing means that each device "owns" a license irrespective of who uses that device.

You can still have multiple users logon to the same device and use O365 as long as they each have a license as they will be signed into O365 with their own licensed account which licenses them to use it.

So in your case you can either buy a single copy of Office 2013 per shared device or you can subscribe the users to a package level on O365 that comes with a O365 license
 
grim said:
I don't see why it's confusing.

Per user licensing means each users "owns" a license that they can use on up to 5 different devices.

Per device licensing means that each device "owns" a license irrespective of who uses that device.

You can still have multiple users logon to the same device and use O365 as long as they each have a license as they will be signed into O365 with their own licensed account which licenses them to use it.

So in your case you can either buy a single copy of Office 2013 per shared device or you can subscribe the users to a package level on O365 that comes with a O365 license
Click to expand...

And you would think that you could find this simple explanation somewhere on Microsofts site, not a chance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X