Companies with experience licensing Microsoft software and services through Enterprise Agreements know that small forests could be felled to produce the paper required for the typical document stack. EAs often incorporate a dozen or more different components, including some or all of the following: Microsoft Business and Services Agreement or Microsoft Business Agreement (Microsoft sometimes…
Microsoft and Flexera recently announced a joint initiative that the two companies have touted as a way to transform “the software supply chain” through the use of a standard set of software asset management (SAM) solutions. By deploying Flexera’s FlexNetManager Suite with Microsoft’s Intelligent Asset Manager, the goal is to create an “agreed upon ELP…
I previously presented my thoughts here regarding changes Microsoft made to its Product Terms pertaining to the Self-Hosted Applications benefit under Software Assurance. After publishing that entry, Microsoft reached out to me to clarify that the principal effect of the change actually is to increase self-hosting rights by extending them to deployments hosted by a…
I am a technology attorney in Texas specializing in software license transactions and disputes with the major software publishers including Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle and IBM. I represent some of the world’s largest corporations in enterprise software license transactions. I have been involved in more than 600 software license disputes in the last 10 years and…
Independent software vendors (ISVs) constitute a diverse group of businesses whose core business model typically consists of utilizing third-party software infrastructure and development platforms (such as Microsoft SQL Server or IBM WebSphere Application Server) to create targeted solutions for their customers. ISVs have become a fixture in today’s marketplace for information technology solutions, and most…
