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Possible Duplicate:
Can you help me with my software licensing question?

I am wondering which license does those cloud providers use for their windows instances they provide? I mean suppose if they buy windows server 2008 with 10 client license are they able to provide 10 windows instances? when client creates say two instances are 2 out of those 10 license used? Can they reuse the license key after the user destroy the instance??

Sorry for too many questions but I can't understand all this that's why asked..

Community
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johngillow
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    Possibly better located at serverfault? My uneducated guess would be you buy some contingent, say 1000 licenses, and subtract one each time you use up one. And if you don't have any more licenses remaining, nobody cares anyway (I was told, back at university, 15 years ago, that they had a license that they were using for "every" computer on the campus, and that was ok with MS -- well, so I was told at least). – dm.skt Jul 05 '11 at 21:39
  • Woudln't this question be better directed at your cloud provider? – Mark Ransom Jul 05 '11 at 21:54
  • I am a cloud provider.. Need to know this because I want to provide windows instances to clients so its necessary for me to understand this.. Anyone who has deep knowledge about this? – johngillow Jul 05 '11 at 21:59
  • are those companies using SPLA? – johngillow Jul 05 '11 at 22:23
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    This needs to be directed to your license vendor. – Holocryptic Jul 06 '11 at 00:57
  • If you are a cloud provider, you need to talk to Microsoft. You really shouldn't be taking advice about issues that can get you sued for thousands of dollars from randomly people on the internet. – devicenull Jul 06 '11 at 01:29

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Cloud providers use what is called the SPLA license. Basically the way this works is that for every month that you use the license (and pay the provider) they pay Microsoft for the license. When you stop using it, Microsoft stops getting paid.

Typically the monthly cost that is paid to Microsoft is between 1 and 5% of the retail license cost. Providers will usually mark this way up (especially for SQL Server, Exchange, etc.) and charge you a fortune for the software because compared to the retail price, the monthly price they charge you looks pretty good.

mrdenny
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Microsoft offers a license agreement targetted to Service Providers.It appears you can pay per processor or per instance.

uSlackr
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