Licensing

Microsoft has a number of licensing models available to customers. The client side of licensing is generally far more costly than server licensing, so let’s look at the client option. You can go to your retail channel and purchase Windows off the shelf. You can purchase a number of different versions of Windows Vista: Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business, and Windows Vista Ultimate. This is probably the most expensive option for most businesses, even small ones. There is a relationship with a reseller and/or Microsoft to purchase in bulk via Volume Licensing, which gives cheaper prices and better support levels from Microsoft. For Volume Licensing customers that also have Software Assurance (a program where automatic rights to new versions within a defined period are made available), an additional version of Vista is available: Windows Vista Enterprise. Like its big brother Vista Ultimate, Enterprise edition includes BitLocker technology that allows the encryption of the entire hard drive using hardware-based data encryption, better compatibility with UNIX applications via the Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA) that allows UNIX applications to run on Vista with no changes, and multilingual capabilities. Additionally, Enterprise edition (not Ultimate) allows users of the free Virtual PC application the right to run four additional copies of the OS (or a down-level OS such as XP). An overview of the upgrade flow improving features is shown in Figure 1-8. Both the home and business lines have a basic and advanced version with Ultimate being the Ultimate version!