Sometimes there is an MS partner involved to assist and help you get legal. The problem here is that different MS partners interpret the rules differently as they can be focused on the true-ups and the implied authority they have. I know from our experience that even trying to get license renewals from people who understand the details if hard enough and these people sell the stuff all day long.
As long as you have good records and can satisfy yourself that you could pass an audit then you should be fine. Start by gathering all the online data – after all that is all MS know about, and then document the gaps. If necessary take a photo of the COA / paperwork etc. of each machine and file them into OneNote so you can have them to hand if you get asked questions. Mike From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Joe Matuscak Sent: 31 March 2014 16:56 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] SOT: Letter from MS, legitimacy ? Be prepared for a hair pulling experience. When we did the "It's not an audit, we're here to help you manage your licenses" they ended up doing lots of aggravating things. Stuff like not wanting to accept the idea that OEM XP licenses on a bunch of old HP machines were valid since neither our accounting or the reseller's records went back far enough to be able to produce an invoice. I think they finally dropped that when we came up with an email acknowledgement from the purchase and took pictures of a number of the COA stickers on some of the boxes. Then there was them saying we needed to purchase something like 20 cores of SQL Server 2012. We were running 2008r2, properly licensed and even with the 2012 transition, we were still properly licensed. I ended up quoting them the relevant sections from the SQL 2012 licensing document about a dozen times before they got it. There was several other dumb things. I've heard that this is being driven from the sales side of Microsoft as a revenue enhancement tool. I didn't see anything that would make me think that's not the case. ________________________________ Hi all One of my new clients called me and said they received a letter via Fedex from MS, regarding licensing. In my 15+ years I have never had that occur before , I asked them to email me the letter so I can take a look at it. They only recently (within the last year) gone to Volume Licensing for Windows/Exchange/outlook and TS cals/licensing, all desktops are desktops are OEM licensed. They are also a small company (maybe 40 desktops ) and a handful of servers. Has anyone on here ever been contacted in this manner? Jean-Paul Natola -- Thanks, Joe Matuscak | Director of Technology Rohrer Corporation | Office: 330-335-1541 717 Seville Road | Wadsworth, Ohio 44281 www.rohrer.com<http://www.rohrer.com> | A Better Package
