At Datanet we can provide you with Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) licensing, this allows Datanet to provide licenses to our customers on a monthly basis. Today we are looking at the implications of software licensing in a Backup & Recovery/ Replication situation.
It’s quite complicated and we have spent some time trying to make sense of it. Following is what we have been told by our license provider but if you have any “licensing experiences” that will help shed more light on the matter then please let us know. You can email us on info@datanet.co.uk
Here is a link to a Microsoft PDF on the matter and we have displayed a few bullet points below.
LICENSE MOBILITY THROUGH SOFTWARE ASSURANCE
Profile
- End Customer wants to outsource ownership of the hardware and the licensing of the infrastructure in an off-site solution
- End Customer wants to own and manage software licenses for the applications
Solution
- Hardware owned by the Service Provider, shared by End Customers
- Infrastructure licensed by the Service Provider’s SPLA agreement
- Applications licensed by the End Customer’s Volume Licensing agreement with SA
SPLA AS A DATA CENTRE PROVIDER
Profile
- End Customer wants to outsource ownership of the hardware and licensing of the infrastructure and applications in an off-site solution
Solution
- Hardware owned by the Service Provider, shared by End Customers
- Infrastructure licensed by Service Provider A’s SPLA agreement
- Applications licensed by Service Provider B’s SPLA agreement
SHARED HARDWARE SOLUTIONS
Profile
- End Customer wants to outsource ownership of the hardware and licensing of the infrastructure and applications in an off-site solution
Solution
- Hardware owned by the Service Provider, shared by End Customers
- Infrastructure licensed by the Service Provider’s SPLA agreement
- Applications licensed by the Service Provider’s SPLA agreement
So, one interpretation of this is: if a backup environment is brought up in a shared environment in the Data Centre, then a SPLA license will be required. If, however, the backup/ replicated environment is on a dedicated secondary environment then the end user license will be sufficient.
