Microsoft has made the terms on which it licenses Windows Server 2022 a little more generous.
In early April the OS giant changed the Product Terms Page for Windows Server Standard, Datacenter, and Essentials. The changes appear not to have rated a blog post or other prose publication.
Microsoft's terms page, by the way, offers a table and not much else. The Register is therefore indebted to the folks at Licensing School and Cloudy With a Chance of Licensing, who spotted three significant changes:
The inscrutability of Microsoft's announcement-by-table means there's no explanation for the changes, and there's no obvious regulatory need for the change - as was the case when Microsoft allowed per-core licensing largely under pressure from the European Union.
The Register fancies the changes address licensing irritants that could get users grinding their teeth about being treated unkindly. Windows Server is the dominant proprietary server OS and therefore represents revenue worth defending, so some kind tweaks to licenses make good sense for Microsoft.
But Linux is widely believed to have surpassed Windows Server's market share. Microsoft has even admitted that more VMs in Azure run Linux than Windows Server.
Linux is, of course, free and open source, and very technically mature thanks to the efforts of the likes of Red Hat, SUSE - and often Microsoft itself.
Even as Microsoft uses structures like the Azure Hybrid Benefit to lower licensing costs, penguin power therefore makes Linux a more than viable alternative. With cloud migrations continuing - and new applications more often than not built on cloud-native architectures - orgs have excellent reasons to consider platforms other than Windows Server.
Knocking a few barnacles off Windows Server licenses, therefore, might keep a few customers around for longer. ®
https://www.theregister.com//2023/04/26/windows_server_license_changes/
Created by Tan KW | Aug 03, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Aug 03, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Aug 03, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Aug 03, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Aug 03, 2024