Microsoft SPLA Licensing

1. What are the main issues in Microsoft SPLA? A Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) is a contract for service providers and independent software vendors who want to license Microsoft products to provide software services to their end customers. What kinds of issues you should know about SPLA? Calculating accurate usage reports monthly is complex for you as SPLA requires a hoster to calculate their usage every month which can be very inconvenient. Also, there are not a lot of great tools to help with this process. Misreporting is common; look below for various problems of the SPLA: • The main common issue is that an SPLA requires a user to be licensed if they have access to the hosted products, whether they log into the environment or not. • Your windows server must be licensed for a minimum of eight cores per processor, and SQL Server must be licensed for a minimum of four cores per processor. • Microsoft Office doesn’t allow for down-edition rights. So, if you have installed and host Office Standard, but you report Office Pro (a more expensive edition), your licenses are not valid for the users with access to Office Standard. Use Octopus Cloud for SPLA for a better understanding of the SPLA licensing.