Sunday, January 20, 2008

Open Value Subscription

Even though I heard about this on the SBSC Advisory Panel, it is not covered by an NDA.

I hereby vouchsafe, foreswear, forsooth, forsake, forgoodnesssake.

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In the good old days, back when the earth was warm, I ran an HP 3000 house. We had nearly-identical servers in two states, a continent apart.

In those days, when you bought a computer for, say $250,000 with all the goodies, you also agreed to pay for maintenance. Roughly 20% per year. That gave me all rights to all the updates.

Ever since then, I've been sold on the subscription system for updates. As long as I come up with my annual payment, I get all the updates. AND I don't have to come up with big payments every few years. I have a pretty stable, lower payment every year. Makes budgeting a lot easier.

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Here's the gist of the new OVS (Open Value Subscription) system.

1) The license is a subscription type (not perpetual).

2) To get started, the license program must be company wide.
    For example, if you're buying Office, you need to put all the machines in the company on Office OVS. When you add a desktop, you can simply install the Office license on the new machine.


3) Annual "True-Up."
    Each year, the company reports the number of licenses in use. If it's higher than the original agreement, the price goes up. If it's lower, the price goes down.


4) Discount for existing licenses.
    Assuming you have some licenses in place, you get a 50% discount for those licenses for the first year.


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Wait. It gets better.

OVS is offered on a wide variety of products (and combinations). These include:

- Office Pro Plus
- Office Small Biz
- Core CAL
- SBS CAL
- Windows Vista Biz Upgrade

- Small Biz Desktop Suite
- - Office Small Biz
- - SBS CAL
- - Windows Vista Biz Upgrade

- Desktop Professional
- - Office Pro Plus
- - Core CAL
- - Windows Vista Biz Upgrade

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Wait. Wait. It gets even better.

If you're like most of us, your new clients come to you with a collection of whatever the hell they happened to buy over the years. They have Office OEM versions, boxed product, and maybe a few licenses.

They all qualify.

Gulp.

It's true.

If your clients have a hodge-podge of current and n-1 versions, this program allows them to scoop it all into a new "legal" license agreement. And they save 50% the first year for all existing licenses.

That means Office 2007 or 2003; Server 2008 or 2003; Windows Vista or XP; etc.

Basically, if your clients have a motley collection of products, you finally have a way to put them on a licensing program that will give you a good, solid annuity income for years to come.

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This program will be announced officially on 2/1 and will be for sale on 3/1.

In the meantime, you can learn more, figure out all the details, and get all of your questions answered by attending one of these webinars:

- January 23rd 8AM PST
- January 29th 11AM PST
- February 6th 8AM PST *
- February 14th 9AM PST
- February 19th 1PM PST
- February 28th 9AM PST

at: http://www.msreadiness.com/newopenvalue

* We don't recommend the 2/6 webinar as it conflicts with my SMB Conference Call. Let your conscience be your guide.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Karl

    This is going to be an awesome program for many small businesses out there, my marketing mind is kicking into gear on how to get this out to the masses and we win over all the other IT shops that are first not paying attention to this and second elect not to run with it.

    hmmmm....thinking

    Cheers

    Stuart Crawford
    Calgary, AB
    http://www.itsuccessmentor.com
    http://www.stuartcrawford.com

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