Product High-Light – Office 2007 – Licensing rules you probably didn’t know!

 

Licensing rules are dependant upon the CHANNEL purchased, so OEM/FPP and VL Office have different licensing rules, as below:

Office Installation and Use Rights – Volume Licensing  

• You may install and use any number of copies of the software and of any prior version of the software on the licensed device.
• You may install a copy on a portable device for use by the single primary user of the licensed device.
• You may also install additional copies on a network device. You may only use those copies as described in the Remote Access section in the PUR.
• You may reassign a license, but not on a short-term basis (i.e., not within 90 days of the last assignment). If you reassign a license, the device to which you reassign the license becomes the new licensed device for that license.
• Office in Volume Licensing is a FULL License, not upgrade

Office Installation and Use Rights – OEM

• You may install and use one copy of the software on the licensed device
• You do not have any downgrade, transfer* or re-assignment rights unless Software Assurance is attached within 90days of OEM purchase
• You cannot use OEM Office on a Terminal Server
• You do not have Portable Use Rights with OEM Office
• Office in OEM is a FULL License, not upgrade

Office Installation and Use Rights – FPP

• You may install and use one copy of the software on the licensed device
• You have Portable Use Rights with FPP Office
• You generally do not have any downgrade rights
• You have re-assignment and transfer rights
• You cannot use FPP Office 2007 to install or access a Terminal Server, exception is Office Ultimate 2007, Office 2003 CAN be used to access a TS Server
• Office in FPP is a FULL License, there is also an upgrade option
• Software Assurance cannot be purchased for Office FPP

* OEM Office can be transferred with the complete PC, not separately

Did you know – Office 2007 Student and Home provides the right to install Office on up to 3 separate devices within the home, this should not be used for commercial business, its totally non-commercial offering

Benefits of having Software Assurance on Office include the Home Use Program, below is an extract from the Product list on HUP, how it is managed, who is responsible, the entitlement of the program

 

Office – Home Use Program

Customers with active Software Assurance coverage for qualifying desktop applications products are eligible to participate in the Home Use Program**. Under the Home Use Program, customers’ employees, who are users of the licensed qualifying applications, may acquire a single license for the corresponding Home Use Program software, to be installed on one home computer. See the table or the individual product sections below to ascertain the desktop applications that qualify customers for participation in the Home Use Program. The desktop applications that are available in the Home Use Program are also identified in the table below*.

Customers’ eligibility to participate in the Home Use Program ends with the expiration or termination of Software Assurance coverage on qualifying desktop applications.

The number of Home Use Program licenses that may be acquired for any given desktop application is limited to the number of licenses for the corresponding qualifying desktop application(s) for which the customer acquires Software Assurance. Under the Home Use Program, an employee’s usage rights are tied to continued employment with the Customer, and end with termination of employment, termination or expiration of Software Assurance coverage for the copy of the corresponding desktop application that employee uses at work, the employee is no longer a user of the licensed copy of the software, or upon the employee’s installation and use of any prior or later version of that desktop application pursuant to a Home Use Program license.

Customers are not responsible for their individual employee’s compliance with the Home Use Program end user license terms. Those terms are between Microsoft and the customer’s employee. We do require that customers limit the Home Use Program access to employees and inform employees of when they should discontinue use of the Home Use Program software in conjunction with a lapse in Software Assurance coverage or employment termination.

*Home Use Program software availability varies by region, offering and language.

For more information, including information on the future availability of additional Home Use Program software, please refer to http://www.microsoft.com/licensing.

** Note to Campus and School customers: Please refer to the agreement (3.5 or greater) for additional program specific rules.

Another benefit of Office in Volume Licensing, so not necessarily subject to having SA, is Platform Independence, if you purchase a license for Office Pro under VL and realise you actually need to deploy Office MAC, the one license covers you to "Switch" to MAC, you do NOT need to purchase another license, this is best demonstrated in an EA were maybe 10% of the Office estate is MAC, so you simply place your order for the Office Pro licenses and install whichever platform you need

 

Office – Platform Independent Licenses

Microsoft Excel, Office Standard Edition, Office Professional Edition, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Word and Works are “platform independent” licenses. A platform independent license allows for a specific product to be used on any computer platform (e.g., Intel®-based, Macintosh) that the software runs on, provided that the version is the same or lower as the original version that was licensed. For instance, a customer who acquired Microsoft Excel 5.0 for Macintosh may choose to use that license to run Microsoft Excel 5.0 for Windows or Microsoft Excel 5.0 for Windows NT, but could not use the license to run Microsoft Excel 7.0 for Windows 95.

The components of a product may vary by platform. In this case, a customer may run only the components of a product that are included in the version they choose to deploy.  For example, if a customer licenses Office Professional for Macintosh, but chooses to run Office Professional 2003 for Windows, the customer is not licensed to run Virtual PC 2004 (Windows), since Virtual PC 2004 is not included with the Windows version of the product.

Further, a customer who enrolls a platform independent license in Software Assurance is eligible to use the most current version of that particular product which is available during the term of the upgrade protection coverage, regardless of platform (as long as only one version is installed/used at a time). For example, a customer who has a Word for the Macintosh license enrolled in Word for the Macintosh Software Assurance or Upgrade Advantage is eligible to switch and use the most current version of Word for Windows that is made available during the term of their coverage.

Office over Terminal Server is posted here