Introduction to the “Open” Family of License Plans
The “Open” family of volume licensing plans includes four sub-plans, each of which is designed for small and mid-market companies. Through these plan companies can receive a 10 to 40% discount off of the retail price of Microsoft’s Office Suite products.

The Open plans give customers a few options. You can deploy a “standard” desk top organization-wide. You can either buy a perpetual license or choose to use your software on a subscription basis with no upfront payment. And you can commit to regular upgrades to the latest Office and server application releases.

Open license plans are available from a large number of resellers. To receive the volume discount customers purchase their licenses and receive an authorization number, which is activated and tracked online. Each authorization number is valid for two years, and users can have multiple open authorizations (with different expiration dates) running simultaneously.

Now let’s take a closer look at each of the sub-plans in the Open family.

The “Open License” Sub-Plan
There are 5 things about the Open License plan that distinguish it from the other sub-plans in the Open family:

1. Purchases can be combined - Organizations can make purchases for several physical sites using the volume discount associated with one authorization number.
2. No grace period - The license must be purchased before the software can be used.
3. Doesn’t require Software Assurance purchase - But if you do choose to purchase Software Assurance (SA), Microsoft’s maintenance program, the SA subscription will expire when your authorization expires – even if this means you will not get to take advantage of the full two-year term on the SA.
4. Perpetual licenses - With Open License you have the right to use the software as long as you want, even after the authorization and any purchased SA plans expire.
5. Non-renewable - At the end of the two year period you must purchase and activate another authorization number if you want to take advantage of the volume discounts on additional purchases, or if you want to renew your SA subscription.

The Open License plan includes two discount levels, each of which operates under a different set of rules. The difference in discounts between these two levels is 1 to 3%.

• Open NL – The discount level with the lowest entry requirements
  The Open NL plan only requires the purchase of five licenses to start a volume discount authorization. While most Microsoft licenses (such as for Office, a Windows upgrade, etc.) count as one license in Open NL, each server product that has a per-processor server license counts as five licenses.
• Open Level C – For business customers only
  The Open Level C plan uses “points” and “pools” to calculate discounts and requires an initial bulk purchase of at least 500 points in a single pool to qualify for the plan. In general this means purchasing $10,000 of something. The three pools are Applications, Systems, and Servers. Each product within each pool has a specific point value assigned to it. After the initial point requirement is reached in a particular pool, subsequent individual (non-bulk) purchases can be made within that pool under that authorization number.

The “Open Value” Sub-Plans
The Open Value sub-plans differ from the Open License sub-plan in several important ways. They each:

• Require purchase of Software Assurance (SA)
• Have a 3-year term
• Are renewable
• Allow payments to be spread out over the agreement term

While the discounts are better than in Open NL or Open Level C, the required SA purchase erases some of the price advantage.

The Open Value sub-plans include:

• Open Value – Only requires purchase of 5 licenses with SA
  The Open Value sub-plan provides perpetual licenses as well as a grace period that lets you install and use a product before it is licensed.
• Open Value Company-wide – High discount level
  Open Value Company-wide also provides perpetual licenses. With Open Value Company-wide you get discounts that are at least 10% greater than those available to other Open customers, but must make an initial purchase of a Microsoft Platform Product (i.e. a bundle that includes an Office product, a Windows upgrade, and client access licenses) for every desktop or laptop computer in the company. However, if you add PCs during the agreement term, the license fees are not due until the next annual anniversary date of the agreement.
  
  Purchasing these Platform Products for at least 250 PCs qualifies you for Open Value Company-wide Level C, an additional 10% discount that brings you close to an Enterprise agreement Level A discount.
• Open Value Subscription – For when you don’t have the cash up front
  Open Value Subscription is a 3-year licensing subscription, after which you must either renew the subscription, remove the software, or purchase a perpetual license for an additional 175% of the annual subscription fee. On an annual basis the subscription program offers the greatest discount, but over the course of the 3-year subscription term you’ll pay 111% of the license purchase price.

Conclusion
With so many options and so many rules, Microsoft’s labyrinthine volume licensing program makes a lot of people want to pull their hair out. As a result, companies often don’t take the time to study their options, and may not realize that they qualify for some type of Microsoft discount. For example, no one should ever pay full retail for a per-processor server license, as purchasing just one of these qualifies the buyer for the Open NL discount plan.

Your best bet: Talk to a qualified advisor – such as Coyote Creek Consulting or your reseller – that understands the ins and outs of all the programs and can steer you in the right direction. But if you would like to do your own research, click here for some good information, including Microsoft’s 80-page PDF that describes volume licensing:

There’s a good chance that you qualify for a discount. Don’t purchase Microsoft Office Suite licenses until you determine whether or not you do.

As always, we’re here for you.

Back to News & Events