I just upgraded both my new Surface Pro 3 and my Dell T7500 to Windows 10 Pro. I have also enabled Client Hyper-V on my T7500 which has dual Xeon X5650 processors and 96 GB of memory. I will start creating test VMs on the T7500 next week utilizing my active MSDN to properly license the test VMs.
I hope your Windows 10 upgrades go as smooth as mine did...
Many organizations struggle to discover and manage the software deployed within their environment, of which numerous are not compliant and exposed to significant risk in the event of a publisher audit.
What most organizations do not clearly understand is the concept of authorized software. The ISO/IEC 19770-1 specification clearly defines an inventory known as “Software Authorized for Installation”. The purpose of this inventory is to determine if a software installation is authorized to exist or not. The authorization can exist at any level, such as a device, a user, or the entire organization. It is critical that SAM practitioners fully understand this concept. It is also very important your SAM tool support this concept.
As you can see it is possible to have software deployed that was never authorized, and authorized software that has never been deployed. Both of these are very important artifacts to a solid SAM practitioner.
I continue to hear stories of organizations who are in search of a SAM easy button. Unfortunately this mythical easy button does not exist. Below is a formula you will often see in the SAM practitioner community. There is no shortage of SAM tool vendors who will make promises of grandeur, but it is not until after the sale customers realize they still lack control of their software assets because they lack the critical elements in the below formula. I am a strong supporter of SAM technology, but not when the organization wishes to rebalance the below formula where the majority of the weight is placed on technology.
Effective SAM = (70% People + Process) + 30% Tools
On Saturday July 6th, 2013 Asiana Airlines Flight 214, a Boeing 777, crashed on landing at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). The pilots were well trained but it appears they relied too heavily on technology. In fact their autothrottle was disabled, yet they thought it was working and automatically controlling the engines. They did not realize they had a serious problem until it was too late.
Fortunately SAM is not a life threatening activity like flying an aircraft, but too heavy a reliance on technology can yield negative results and create compliance issues. I once heard a SAM Manager explain he expects his team to completely understand the underlying data and be able to confirm if the SAM tool they use is yielding the correct results through small samples. I 100% agree with this approach.
I would also say to any organization who has an existing SAM tool they are not achieving the desired results from, consider the problem may be a lack of people and process not the technology. Before making another purchase, carefully analyze the situation.
Visual Studio 2015 has released to manufacturing (RTM).
Microsoft has provided more Agile Project Management features in TFS 2015 and at a lower cost.
Microsoft has announced numerous updates to the MPSA, including support for MSDN.
It is very clear Microsoft is steaming full ahead with their cloud first strategy, and as a byproduct an entire new ecosystem has been born. Managing and reporting on O365 appears to be a hot new area that will only expand from here. The below three companies have various SaaS offerings in this space. All of these offerings hook into the Microsoft portal and simplify what can be done via PowerShell. I fully expect to see the SAM tool community jump into this space through innovation or acquisition. You have to love where a need exists a solution will appear!
The Microsoft community has been a buzz with the expected pricing changes arriving from Microsoft on August 1, 2015. I found an article from SoftwareONE I felt summarized the expected changes very effectively.
Attention - Please click here to read the latest update to this post...
I was just made aware of a most interesting article written by Barry Pilling today. It appears Microsoft is making critical changes to MSDN product use rights in the new July 2015 Product Terms.
Based on the article I would say the new use rights appear to directly conflict with page 15 ("Where the Software Can be Installed and Run") and the example on the top of page 23 of the January 2015 Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 and MSDN Licensing whitepaper.
This conflict appears to be very significant, and I encourage all readers to reach out to their Microsoft account team for clarification. If Barry's article is correct on the interpretation of the new MSDN licensing terms, this will have a negative financial impact on many Microsoft customers.
Let's hope this is an oversight and Microsoft comes out with a clarification saying so and corrected product use rights.
Thank you Barry for bringing this to the community's attention!
Please feel free to send me any updates on this hot issue to info@softwareadvocates.com.
Click here to read Barry's article...
Click here to download the latest Visual Studio and MSDN Licensing White Paper...
Beginning in July 2015, a new document called the Product Terms replaces both the Product Use Rights and the Product List.
