What is a sign your licensing is too complicated?

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korewarp@reddit

And this is why i ignore most M$ licenses and just.. try my best. Fucken idiotic scheme..

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Trelfar@reddit

The biggest sign for me was when I attended a seminar at Microsoft's UK HQ and their own licensing specialist gave us contradictory information from what was on his own slides.

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netcat_999@reddit

I've always said that when there's a certification in licensing for the software, it's too complicated.

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Myantra@reddit

I generally operate with the belief that if someone tells me they understand Microsoft licensing, I know I am talking to a liar.

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stevewm@reddit

People that work at Microsoft don't understand Microsoft licensing.

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autogyrophilia@reddit

In a previous company

A Microsoft employee told my manager that he just needed a single SPLA pack per VM.

This resulted in all pricing for the clients (MSP) being in the red when accounted properly.

I decided to leave for another company because I rather not live with the stress of being one audit away from losing my job despite being so Cassandra about it .

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Shnicketyshnick@reddit

It's got to be a 3 day course because what you learn on day 1 had changed by day 3.

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Fallingdamage@reddit

One reason we've stayed on prem for much of our stuff. Easier to maintain continuity. Our own property (digital) isnt being held hostage by a paywall.

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sexybobo@reddit

I am willing to bet this is just a CSP trying to sell their services.

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english-23@reddit

But but "no hidden agenda" they say! Why would they lie??

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bobs143@reddit

When it has anything to do with VMware.

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They just want your business. They'll steer you towards their "license optimization" engagement for 50k then tell you to drop your software assurance and rebuy all your licenses every 3-4 years. It's a common stupid idea that places like this love to sell to upper management.

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WechTreck@reddit

Basically MS locks the people with the money in a venue for 3days. It's not to teach them the ways, it's to brainwash them.

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pdp10@reddit

On the other hand, software assurance is a type of lock-in and you lose what bargaining position you had.

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M0r1d1n@reddit

Yesterday my ESRI rep called me, to butter me up and arrange a call, to discuss the new licensing in that one (instead of while we're already on said phone).

I'm going to say that qualifies, otherwise they'd just send a renewal.

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ABotelho23@reddit

When your website says "contact sales for pricing".

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sick2880@reddit

Yeah I never thought I would miss dealing with cisco cumc licensing, but here we are....

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TYGRDez@reddit

I was looking into Cisco AnyConnect licensing recently and came across this magnificent wall of text:

Q. What are the available authorized (user) counts for the new AnyConnect licenses?

A. The Plus and Apex licenses are available via banding-based licenses (L-AC-PLS-LIC= and L-ACAPX- LIC=) that allow you to select a specific user count (e.g. 873), a specific term length (e.g. 30 months) and start date (e.g. term starts on date X, up to 60 days in the future). The price per user per month decreases as the user count increases and/or the term length increases. Whenever possible, this method should be used to order Plus and Apex term licenses instead of the LAC-PLS-xYR-G/L-AC-APX-xYR-G method. The L-AC-PLS-LIC= and L-AC-APX-LIC= ordering method will provide more flexibility for user counts, term duration and simpler renewals.

I can't read that without my eyes glazing over a little 🫠

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badlybane@reddit

The never-ending toil of Microsoft "how to charge users more for less but not make them realize it"

Wait we developed a new feature.... that's worse than the feature we depreciated.

Let's make a good platform with multiple avenues of admin. For ease of management and cross reference. Then let's move it into one menu in a new admin site and remove cross admin functions with only the ability to view and not actually admin.

Let's make it so if someone directly assigns a license on accident then we assign a group license. Thets remove the ability to rip out the accidentally assigned direct license until the unassigned the group license. Then add them back.

Have my powershell scripts for o365 dow. Pretty good. Can do like 80 percent with a few mouse clicks and........ they depreciated it. Graph app you say. Nesting searches for the same stuff.

Yea lets remove teams from being licensed in e3 to let people save money. Not double the skull cound and next month the cost for non teams e3 with be the same as the current skull with teams. And the stand alone teams skull is not a pod for addon.....

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mooseable@reddit

https://m365maps.com/
easy.
But also, most licenses, you're licensing a "person" not an email address. The most common mistake.
But 18+ hours training to learn licensing and cost optimisation? I don't feel like it needs that much, but maybe I've been drowning in the M$ T&C pool of hell for too long :|

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MrTrism@reddit

This is so unbelievably hard to explain to anyone. And we all know it is for good reason. "Just spool up a mailbox for blah and blah to share. They don't both need their own licence." They do. Licence is either per human being, or in rare occasion, per device.

It's sort of like the sheer "gaps" in licensing options, clearly to get people into the ecosystem, then put such finite limits, that it's rendered useless pretty quick requiring an upgrade in plan.

So you want webmail for everyone in Ent; Oh, F3, great... Except... 2GB of storage. Okay, so workarounds... Don't work well. Turn on revisioning/data protections, and because F3 doesn't come with Archive space, once you fill 2GB, it is a LOT of effort to fix.

So you go look for F5. But F5 isn't bigger storage, it's a different plan altogether. F4? Anything not having full office and the cost? Nope.

E1? Nope, only for smaller business. So you jump 4x the cost to E3, just because 2GB of email is almost useless.

No, Microsoft knows EXACTLY what they're doing. They just don't care. You know a product is so horridly licensed, that there's opportunities for organizations to help and/or prey on those who struggle with licences.

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Centimane@reddit

This much training would only make sense to me for managing cloud costs. Cloud costs are death by a thousand cuts. It can be hard to optimize in particular because how you change it depends heavily on your use case.

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ZY6K9fw4tJ5fNvKx@reddit

Or a core or cpu, or vcpu or concurrent cpu or memory or virtual memory or physical memory of your host. Did i tell you each sql version is different?

You could take a datacenter license and it would be only be a 3 day course instead of 1 fte. Imagine the savings!

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mooseable@reddit

Oh right, its 2AM, and I forgot we also deal with VLSC, OLP, SPLA, CSP and Software Subscriptions. Now I'm going to have nightmares :(

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Dsavant@reddit

God forbid you miss one tiny thing too and then true-up comes around and so does MS's accounts receivable department going "hey buuuud"

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FarToe1@reddit

Honestly, I'd vote for anyone who campaigned on a single pledge "All software prices must be displayed on their website on a per-unit basis"

Few things make me grumpier than enterprise software pricing, and I'm not even the poor guy who has to work it out.

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vandon@reddit

MS and Oracle were at a party. Microsoft was talking about their convoluted licensing. Oracle said, "Hold my beer"

Oracle licensing is so complicated that even a VAR and Oracle working together have trouble figuring out what all you need and which type of license applies.

And I'm not just taking about their databases.

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ZY6K9fw4tJ5fNvKx@reddit

Amazone bills you for holding the beer at just 0.09$ a minute. It's waitering as a service.
And if you don't want no discount you need to select 30 days of free Prime subscription... Just check the correct option on checkout.

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punkwalrus@reddit

When every setup is is a violation to some degree. I have worked in shops like this. This became of particular attention when virtualization started taking off. If the licence based on processors of the host or guest? Some software for a while would detect if it was being virtualized/containerized and refuse to run.

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Lukage@reddit

Your licensing is too complicated if you simply have licensing with Oracle or Adobe.

Special mention to Kaseya if you are counting contract loopholes. Kaseya could find a loophole in their contracts to argue for a Presidential third term.

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litesec@reddit

i primarily work as a ServiceNow developer and consultant. literally any licensing question is "ask your account manager" because every contract is different, can include bundled licensing, etc. and none of the information is public. i've seen the pricing because my firm is partnered, but i believe(?) i'm under NDA and can't disclose it.

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EMCSysAdmin@reddit

when it gets "too close" to a ServiceNow product they can force you to pay for that product, even though you did not subscribe

This \^ This is just bs.

Previous company I was with had a partnership with ServiceNow. I wasn't part of the dev team, but I know they built things that ServiceNow adopted into their code base.

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Superb_Raccoon@reddit

Laughs in IBM

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anomalous_cowherd@reddit

When your own licensing helpline comes up with a different answer every time, even to your own sales staff.

Yes I'm thinking about Microsoft, but others do it too.

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Smith6612@reddit

Well said. It's one thing to just have your pricing locked behind a "Contact us" message. Which means for small shops, you're probably not able to afford it anyways. It's another thing to have to require an entire MSP or Sales organization which is third party to have to explain everything to you.

Or needing to have an entire certification course on a product JUST to know how to buy something from it (looking at you, AWS). But that's probably just me being a bit salty about AWS's nickle and dime practices.

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chaoslord@reddit

Your name starting with "Nut" and ending with "Anix". Oooof.

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MethanyJones@reddit

If you think that's bad try partnering with them

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Strongit@reddit

If you have to wipe and reinstall Windows on a computer, just because your licensing application failed, it's too complicated. Happens on a weekly basis here for Intergraph Smart Licensing.

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pdp10@reddit

Microsoft licensing is designed to extract the most fees while still encouraging vendor loyalty. Microsoft's main strategy since the 1980s has been bundling software. Hence all the complexity.

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Cormacolinde@reddit

They’re designed to be complex enough that you can’t figure out exactly what you need, or can’t even get it because of bundling and such. You’re either under and non-compliant, or you have to go over to make sure you’re compliant. A lot of companies do the second because they don’t want legal trouble.

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