Recently I have come across a number of Microsoft customers that are also Microsoft Gold Partners that have renewed or entered into a new Enterprise Agreement. One of the most common mistakes is the confusion regarding the number of Gold Partner Licensing grants they are entitled too. I have seen cases where customers have literally left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table from under utilizing the licensing grant they are entitled to as a basic part of the Gold Partner program.
Maximizing Your Licensing Grant
- Initial licensing grant – this is the basic number of licenses your organisation is entitled to when enrolling into the program https://partner.microsoft.com/US/program/programoverview/40029254
- Maximum licensing grant – in order to maximize your licensing grant (for example receiving 500 Office licenses) you need to understand how to go about executing this benefit, first off all you must be aware that to be entitled to additional licenses you need to order a “Tool Kit”, a Tool Kit can be ordered for any additional location (Office residing at a separate address then the main office), in order to maximize the license grant you need to order an additional 4 Tool Kits (Maximum licensing grants is per partner per country) per country. If you have offices in multiple countries you can enroll them separately into the Gold Partner program and enjoy the same maximum licensing grant.
- Pay attention to what licenses are available through the partner grant, many times customers/partners only utilize the Office, Cal’s and MSDN licenses, there are in addition products such as BizTalk (Priced at $22,000 a year per processor), CRM, MDOP, SQL and SharePoint Server for Internet sites (priced at $26,000 per year in the EA) and may more.
Eligibility for Additional Partner Program Toolkits
To qualify to receive an Additional Partner Program Toolkit, a location must satisfy one of the following scenarios. Note that each location may receive only one Additional Program Toolkit.
- Scenario 1 - Two associated MCPs Three approved references
- Scenario 2 – One associated certified product
- Scenario 3 (For partners with the Microsoft Business Solutions Competency only) – One Microsoft Business Solution exam that leads to the competency. Three approved references.
The Additional Partner Program toolkit provides the same number of licenses as those provided in the initial software license grant. The licenses provided by the Additional Program Toolkit are governed by the maximum license caps set for each Partner, per country. Please refer to the Software License Resources‖ section for details regarding the license benefits and maximum license caps.
If you have any questions regarding Microsoft Licensing please contact us.
Good article Daryl and a common circumstance. We additionally frequently find Microsoft “Business Partners” who have never taken the step to become part of the Microsoft Partner Network (although typically carry all of the qualifications). This actually prompted us to add to our service line a flat fee service for helping these companies navigate the steps to becoming part of the Partner Network and understanding their licensing grants.
An important item to note is that these license grants can only be used while your Partner Network subscription is current and does not carry downgrade rights. You must be running current technology (there is a window allowing for upgrade at the change of versions). Also, Microsoft has recently added the option to obtain a report online of your licensing rights. Since various competencies come with their own additional grants this is very helpful in keeping current across all of a companies rights.
I think one very important aspect you forgot to mention is that there are NO downgrade rights to Partner licenses.
This means any organisation that wishes to utilise this benefit will need to upgrade at every release. This should be obvious as one of the main reasons Microsoft is so generous with their licenses is in order to encourage their Partners to sell what they use and use what they sell.
In addition these licenses are for internal use only and therefor might not be applicable to many database and business functions.