The SAM Club has helped many clients navigate Microsoft Audits. However, our focus is to help clients ensure they are compliant before being audited.
For clients that have a Service Agreement with The SAM Club, continuously assisting them to remain compliant, is included as standard. However, we can also assist on a project basis.
To check that licenses installed comply with those owned or covered by subscriptions, the process involves:
• Obtaining a License Statement from Microsoft and comparing with licenses/subscriptions displayed on VLSC and MPSA portals
• Checking Software Assurance (SA) cover, both active & expired, and active subscriptions to determine releases entitled to
• Running a non-intrusive software utility to identify quantities of products, releases & Editions installed
• Documenting all the above in a SAM Workbook that can be maintained & updated as future changes occur
• Identifying any discrepancies between installations and licenses owned & active subscriptions
• Producing a report on findings for discussion & follow up actions
Some of the real-world issues that we’ve found in previous exercises include:
• Wrong license Editions installed, e.g. Office Standard instead of Office Pro (or vice versa) and SQL Enterprise instead of Standard
• Unsupported product releases still being used
• No SA cover for License Mobility Rights
• No SA cover for Roaming Use Rights on Office, Visio & Project licenses
• Incorrect SA or Licensing cover for Disaster Recovery purposes, e.g. for cold or hot standby servers
• User logins to RDS/Citrix not restricted by a suitable product or to an Active Directory Group
• Non-optimum licensing to cover Test & Development servers
• Value of redundant permanent licenses not recovered, e.g. as a result of moving to Office365 and/or M365
A major by-product of the exercise can be a significant clean-up of Active Directory.
Note: If you are audited by Microsoft and found to have installed unlicensed products, Microsoft will make you pay for them even though you uninstall them, as they will deem that you have made use of them.
Our objectives are to save our clients time and money and ensure compliance.
For an exploratory discussion please contact us at [email protected]
