The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/27607
“Convert three training days to one day of desktop deployment services.” legally responsible for the license. We are making sure our users know about this benefit well ahead of our Office 2010 deployment. This will allow them to get familiar with the new version of Office at home before our rollout and, hopefully, cut down on the time and cost of training. • Forecast-Free Select Agreements: This applies to the “one- off” applications that you really don’t need as part of your EA. For example, purchasing a license of MapPoint or Visio gets you a great price point because it goes on a Select Agreement. • Step-Up Licenses: Step-up licensing allows you to upgrade from a base or standard software edition to a premium or enterprise license for a lower price. For example, Office Standard to Office Professional or Windows Server Standard to Server Enterprise. • Client Access Licenses (CALs): When selecting your CALs, you have a choice of user-based or device-based — this gives you more control over your costs by managing the licenses your firm requires. If you have mobile users that access Exchange from their cell phones, you’re probably better off licensing per user instead of device. If you were to license per device, you’d have to license the user’s cell phone and laptop/ desktop. A good rule of thumb is to license your CALs per user if you have more devices than users; per device if you have more users than devices. • Annual True-Ups: This process allows for delaying payment on licenses used in production. If you have a specific quantity of licenses listed on the EA at signing and then you deploy more the next day, you are not financially obligated for the additional licenses until the following year’s True-Up. HOW DO I REMEMBER ALL OF THIS? The best thing to do is be aware of what you have and treat your agreement like any other resource. To ensure that my team is taking full advantage of our EA’s services and products, we are leveraging our relationship with our LAR. The LAR has resources to monitor what we use and don’t use over the course of the agreement. Tasking our LAR to provide monthly utilization reports and subscription activity reports helps us stay aware of those lesser-known, but equally valuable, services that might be missed. You cannot put it all on your vendor, however. Because of the sheer size of the agreement, it’s quite the task to undertake; you will also need to get help internally. Keeping that in mind, I offer these recommendations and my congratulations on your new (or newly reacquainted) Microsoft EA agreement: • Familiarize Yourself with the EA: Limitless amounts of information on Software Assurance, Premier Support, TechNet and all other elements of an EA can be found on Microsoft’s website, as well as on partner-provided documentation. There is no lack of information on the details of an EA; the real problem is organizing the information and getting it to the right people who can take advantage of it. • Get an Administrator: A best practice is to assign someone to be the EA administrator. This person would sing the praises of the agreement while monitoring its use. • Market the Benefits: Throughout the firm, you have stakeholders that would benefit from some aspect of the EA. Trainers would love the e-learning resource, developers can benefit from TechNet and evaluation licensing, and system administrators would value the architect access. Market the Enterprise Agreement to your firm’s support staff and, ideally, you can build a team representing each of your key departments. Once they are familiar with the benefits, they can begin using them to their full potential. ILTA Andrew Collier is a 20 year veteran in the information technology industry. As Chief Information Officer at Ice Miller, Drew leads the IT staff in strategic technology initiatives to improve the productivity of the firm. His focus on improving customer service and ensuring a consistent positive experience for end users lends to his roles as an advocate for marketing technology as a service to both the firm and the client. He can be reached at acollier@icemiller.com. Peer to Peer the quarterly magazine of ILTA 37