I’m right now in the process of evaluating the new Business Ready Licensing (BRL) model to the existing model. And I have problems finding someone who really knows what it’s about in details. I want to read the small text!
The issue is that first time I heard about this model, I was told that the main difference between the new and the old was that where you with the existing model pays per session. And for a company like ours, where most of the users only will be using the system once or twice a week, then this new model will really be MUCH more expensive than the old model.
It is a user based pricing but concentrating on the value ( modules ) provided along with the user.
There are 2 types of licensing Business Essentials & Advanced Management, both have additional components (modules) which can be bought in addition to the selected license. Some of the additional componenets like Manufacturing / Supply Chain are only available to Advanced Management License.
The reason to change the Module based pricing is mainly to standardise the pricing structure accross Microsoft offerings and making it more competitive against SAP B1 / Oracle SE & other mid market products.
Well if you had been reading my blog (here on this site), then you would know that I very much know what this is about. So no I’m sorry your information did not help at all!
But I was asking a very specific question that I still like to get answered, and that is if they with this new model are changing the concept where you usually had to pay “per session” to a “per named user”. Do you know anything about that??
Yes that’s what I have heard everywhere, I’ve just not seen anything in writing.
The issue of cause is that if they implement this “global license agreement”, then they cannot measure the number of sessions/users as they do right now, where you’re only allowed to use the same license on one SQL server. With a “global license” you would use the same license on many different servers on different locations. At least that’s what I have heard…
I just talked to our partner, and they said that they had also heard from Microsoft that the new license was a “per named user” model instead of the session/concurrent user model.
But that new licensing model is already running (old one will be dead by october)… We should already have that information (somebody has probably made a BRL license for a customer till now…)
Well, I’ve not heard that the old model would be dead! They are planning to keep both models. Otherwise I’m sure we had seen even more issues about this… And to what I hear then you would not be able to buy the new license until September. But September is coming very fast, so we should all have had detailed information in writing by now!
MS told us, at least for our region (Balkan’s countries):
We can order licenses by new model (BRL) as of 01.08.06.
We can order licenses by old model (UBP/Professional/Standard) till 13.10.2006.
Nobody explicitly said that new BRL model is based on “per names model”. Nobody even mentioned changes of that kind but that doesn’t mean that they will not change it in a future…
yes, that is the exact information we got as well at the partnermeeting here in Switzerland. Only BRL Licenses will be sold from October 13th on. There is also a change for all customers with the Upgrade fee. Existing customers will eventually also have to pay 16%. I think I remember, that it still is concurrent users (with the BRL Licensing), but I will try to check that when I can.
Actually there is a document on Partnersource - in pricelist section - but its said to be Partner Confidential, I can`t post its contents here…
What can be said (from different source, but also MS):
…Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Runtime Edition and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Runtime Edition are sold on a per “NAMED” user basis. This requires a customer to license a SQL User for each person accessing the system. The number of SQL users must be equal to or greater than the number of Professional users on the license. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Runtime Edition and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Runtime Edition are licensed only as a platform to the Navision product. A full SQL license is required to support any other third party products including, but not limited to, other Microsoft products not sold on the Navision price list…
New licenses are required to purchase a minimum of 10 SQL Server Runtime Edition Users.
NAV users are still concurrent users, as before. Also, the new 16% applies only to BRL customers - at least I understood it so.
From analysis done on our past sales our smaller sites it would be more expensive for, as htey have some of the “advanced” granules. Our larger sites would generally have saved on the license fee. The biggest “loss” of revenue is to Microsoft with the change of the license fee. This will mean either an NSC puts up with this loss of revenue, or they attempt to get this loss back from the customer through other means. It depends upon the support arrangements, but if it is a flat fee for the year (not maintenance) then things will probably need to change under BRL.
