SMARTDesktop - Microsoft Licensing & Total Cost of Ownership – Part 2

Last article (part 1) was all about the definition of VDI, types of deployment, the flexibility that SMARTDesktop would bring on to the table thus increasing the benefits.
In this article, we shall take a customer scenario and try to explain the Microsoft Licenses to be procured by the customer.

Assumptions:

1. Total Number of Users / end points – 200
2. Customer's ERP runs only on Microsoft Windows Operating System both on server and client side.
3. Customer has not implemented the Web client for the ERP, thus sticking to desktop client to be installed on every individual endpoint.
4. Customer wants to reuse his existing PCs but need to change the operating system as Microsoft has ended the extended support and mainstream support for Windows XP and Windows 7 respectively.
5. Customer has already started using Open Office across the organization.
6. Customer wants to have better control over the licenses and wants to remove the overhead of maintaining each end-point across the enterprise.
7. In case of replacing the existing desktops / laptops, customer wishes to have the flexibility in the choice of end-point client devices and also wants to enable the corporate application access over the tablets, mobile devices.
8. Customer wish to integrate with existing Active Directory Domain for user management & authentication. Domain is installed on Windows Server 2008 R2.
9. Customer wish to implement the solution with High Availability & Load balanced configuration.
10. Customer does not have any virtualization platform, is open to implement an Open Source based Hypervisor.

The SMARTDesktop – Microsoft Licensing Matrix for above scenario.

Hypervisor / OS / Application	Qty	Sessions	VDI	Remarks
The Hypervisor	As required	√	√	Quantity based on number of hosts involved in workload
Active Directory CALs	200	√	√	Active Directory CALs are not included either with Windows Server OS or Windows XP/7/8.1. Customer must procure them separately.
Windows Server 2008 R2 / 2012 R2 for hosting the applications for session sharing	2	√	-	2 servers are considered for High Availability scenario.
Windows Server CALs (2008 or 2012)	200	-	-	CAL have to be for same edition or higher. Customer cannot reuse the Windows Server 2003 CALs
Windows Server RDS - CAL (2008 or 2012) – Device CALs	200	√	-	RDS-CALs must be for same or higher edition of Windows Customer cannot reuse the Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server CALs.
Windows 7 / 8.1 Desktop Operating System with Software Assurance	200	-	√	Software Assurance is renewable year on year
VDA Subscription	200	-	√	To be procured only if Desktop OS is procured without Software Assurance. VDA is renewable year on year.
Open Office Application	NA	-	-	Open Office is free software. Customer can simply download install as many images as required.
ERP Software License	As required	√	√	This license must be procured separately, as per policy of Vendor
Any other applications	As required	√	√	As per policy of vendor

Any CAL, must be of the same or higher edition & version. Just in case customer has license for Windows Server 2003 CALs, the same cannot be reused when the customer wants switch over to either Windows Server 2008 or 2012. 

Sicne the customer is not using any office applications from Microsoft, there is no need to procure any office license. Just in case any customers were to use Microsoft Office in VDI environment (Shared Sessions or VDI), licenses for total number of end devices used to access the office applications must be procured separately. If customer wishes to use Office 365, customer must subscribe to license for total number of users plus 1 Office 2013 standard license to install on VDI environment.

Linux Servers used in the SMARTDesktop deployment are totally free, unless customer wants to use RedHat or SuSE Enterprise Linux that is available only against support subscription. 

We shall come back here again with TCO analysis for the same customer scenario.

Share your thoughts.