Microsoft Software Assurance Benefits

Use

1. Windows Vista™ Enterprise is available exclusively as a benefit of Software Assurance and is designed to help midsize and larger organizations significantly lower IT costs and improve IT efficiency. Windows Vista Enterprise includes Full Volume Encryption, which helps enhance the protection of sensitive data. It also supports advanced application compatibility scenarios with Virtual PC Express by enabling customers to run legacy applications in a virtual machine. Virtual PC Express will be available for customers to begin using before the release of Windows Vista Enterprise Edition.

1. Extended Training continues to be a benefit highly valued by customers that want to increase the skills and expertise of their IT professionals on the latest technology, at no additional cost. This benefit will continue to be available, and now SA customers that have at least 30,000 Microsoft Office or Windows client licenses will receive an additional number of training vouchers that can be used for training from a Microsoft Certified Partner for Learning Solutions.

Transition

1. Extended Lifecycle Hotfix Support (available since July 2005) allows Software Assurance customers with Premier or Essential Support agreements to sign an Extended Hotfix Support Agreement if and when they need a hotfix, increasing peace of mind and reducing support cost. Annual fees are now included as part of the Software Assurance benefit, and there is no requirement to sign up within a 90-day period of a product’s transition to Extended Support. Covered products include Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Windows Client Operating System, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), Microsoft SQL Server™, Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) and Microsoft Windows Server™.
2. Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (formerly code-named “Eiger”). For enterprise customers concerned with security and manageability of legacy PCs running legacy operating systems, but that are not in a position to replace those PCs, Microsoft is introducing Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs as an exclusive benefit to SA customers. Based on Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 2, Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs is designed to provide a bridge solution that enables customers to get additional life out of legacy PCs while reducing security risks and improving manageability as well as providing an easy upgrade path to new PC hardware running either Windows XP or Windows Vista.
3. Enterprise Edition Step-Up License helps provide SA customers with the ability to achieve significant cost savings by migrating from the standard edition of a select list of products to the enterprise edition without having to purchase a new license, paying only the difference and maintaining their current SA coverage.