Microsoft Fails Long Term Open Licensing Customers with Office for iPad O365 Requirement

We received an inquiry from one of our clients about obtaining Office for their iPad. Obviously the paid version is required in order to edit Office documents.

We fired an e-mail off to our licensing contact at Synnex Canada and received the following:

The clear-cut answer is that Microsoft has seemingly set up a requirement for Open License customers to double pay.

How is that?

Well, in the case of our clients they have been on Open Value Agreements for quite a few cycles in some cases. When OVL hits the third renewal (years 7-9) the SA Only costs bring the overall cost of that license and SA close to the OEM costs.

For clients that have regular refresh rates of about 36 months for their equipment this makes sense on so many levels.

So, our clients have already purchased their Office Professional Plus or Office Standard licenses and are on SA Only for them.

To get Office for iPad for their devices there is no SKU to add to their existing agreement. They would have to purchase an Office 365 subscription either personally or for the organization in an O365 MidSize Business plan which on Open Value is $200/Year/User.

Ouch.

It looks like we've just been double billed.

IMNSHO this decision of Microsoft's to force the Office 365 subscription for existing Open License clients is very poorly thought through.

This situation really begs the question as to whether Open License is a valued proposition going forward as Microsoft further segments products into the subscription side to force businesses that have already paid for their licenses to pay yet again ... and again ... and again.

Hopefully Microsoft will come up with something to remove the double billing.

Philip Elder
Microsoft Cluster MVP
MPECS Inc.
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

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