MSDN Ultimate - using Office 2010 for general business purposes

It seemed to be the case in the past you could use Office on a single device for general business purposes (as well as, I believe, use copies on development machines provided the user had an MSDN subscription)

However, the latest guidance seems to be that Office can now only be used on a single device for 'production use', not general business use. So if you want Office 2010 for business email correspondence then you need to buy a separate copy?

Am I reading this correctly?

Edit: here is the MS guidance:

Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Premium with MSDN subscriptions include Microsoft Office applications for development and testing. Additionally, the following applications can be used by licensed users of Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Premium with MSDN on one device for production use:

Office Professional Plus 2010

Visio® Premium 2010

Project Professional 2010 (includes one device CAL for Project Server)

However, production environment is defined as:

A production environment is defined as an environment that is accessed by end-users of an application (such as an Internet Web site) and that is used for purposes other than Acceptance Testing of that application.

I would intrepret general business use to be within this definition?

msdn

sturdytree

Posted 2012-05-30T18:55:59.267

Reputation: 123

you are correct; the wording in the MS Guidance is meant to differentiate 'production' use (Office products, for whatever you normally use Office for in your business) from 'development' use (everything else, for developing solutions only), which I think MS believes is a clearer distinction than "general use". – KutuluMike – 2012-05-30T20:16:35.157

Answers

"Production use" is "general use".

Edit:

< Conflicting/outdated(?) MS content removed >

Based on your updated version of the agreement, the first line still stands: "production use" IS "general business" use.

You are reading it correctly if you are reading it as "I can use one copy of Office, Visio and/or Project for non-developmental purposes. Things that are unrelated to development or testing, like emailing my co-workers, doing the business' accounting, and writing my next best-seller, are acceptable". :)

When you are using the "application", but not for developing a solution for "end-users", then you are an "end user" of the "application", of which you get one license of, for each of the listed software packages.

Hopefully that's clearer than mud. ;)

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007

Posted 2012-05-30T18:55:59.267

Reputation: 103 763

thanks, I've added to my question the MS guidance in their MSDN licensing whitepapers (April 2012) - that does allow 1 device to use Office for production. – sturdytree – 2012-05-30T19:26:35.803

That's a nice update to know, I'll go check it out in MSDN. :) and update my answer. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-05-30T19:38:20.040

1Note that some subscriptions have special terms... E.g. my "Empower ISV" subscription used to have better licensing terms than the generic MSDN subscription. Terms also vary from country to country. – haimg – 2012-05-30T19:54:02.803

@haimg I agree 100%. I'm pretty sure we get something like 10 "production" copies of Office with our TechNet, plus 90% of MSDN softwares for development/testing usages. And even that may not be right now that it's Q2 2012. Go figure. ;) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-05-30T19:57:06.420

It is worth noting that with Visual Studio 2012 the production use of Project and Visio has been removed from the Ultimate and Premium MSDN subscriptions.

Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing White Paper

Production use of Certain Office Applications

Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Premium with MSDN subscriptions include Microsoft Office applications for development and testing. Additionally, Office Professional Plus 2013 can be used by licensed users of Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Premium with MSDN on one device for production use.

Donald Byrd

Posted 2012-05-30T18:55:59.267

Reputation: 829