Blendblog.net Home - Become a Microsoft Partner...get discount on licenses

Location: Blogs Sean Cullinan
Posted by: Sean Cullinan	2/14/2008 10:04 AM
I was digging around for a downloadable version of SP1 for Vista and heard that MS Partner's could download it. Ok, I thought, I'll become an MS Partner. While I haven't been able to find the download for Vista SP1 (which isn't a problem as MSDN is supposed to be posting it by weeks end), I did find out about the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription. For $299/year you get quite a bit. Here's what you receive..click the welcome kit tab to see a listinig of all the licenses. To give a summary it includes: 10 Licenses of Vista Business Upgrade 10 Licenses of Office 2007 (10 each of Enterprise, Professional, Accoounting etc.) 10 Licenses of Visio 2007 1 License of Windows Server 2003 1 License of Windows Server 2008 1 License of SQL Server 2005 Standard I'm sure many of you are asking "why do I need this when I get most of this with MSDN already?" Well first of all, the licenses are completely diffferent. The MSDN license "allows each person with an MSDN license to use all of the software that is included in the subscription for development, test, and demonstration purposes only." There has always been debate as to what exactly this means, some have said that you shouldn't use your MSDN copy of Office 2007 on your machine if you use that machine to check email, write up product documentation etc. as these are not development, test, or demonstration purposes. In contrast the Action Pack license " can be used for internal business use" although not for say a comercial website. This seems to possibly cover the gap that the MSDN license leaves us with, especially with regards to Office usage. The partner program also has other benefits, but this Action Pack is the most compelling for the lowest tier level of partnership. You can become a certified partner by jumping through some hoops, which is probably a good idea. You can read about all of this at the MSFT site. I'd be interested to see what thoughts others had on this deal. It seems like MSFT is doing a lot to make their software affordable to those who make Microsoft more successful through their work...the partner program seems like a great deal.

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Re: Become a Microsoft Partner...get discount on licenses

By Mike Brown on 2/15/2008 5:23 PM

I think you're permitted to use the copies of Office that come in MSDN for non-development use. What you can't do however is use the MSDN Exchange license to run your corporate email. Hence, the action pack is a great deal!<br><br>Also you might want to consider the Empower for ISV program which gives you 10 MSDN Premium with VS Professional licenses for up to 2 years under the agreement that you will develop and release a software package in that time frame. All for 300 dollars a year.<br><br>In that time, you should have qualified for Certified Partner which includes MSDN Subscriptions as well.

Re: Become a Microsoft Partner...get discount on licenses	By Sean Cullinan on 2/16/2008 9:16 PM
Thanks for the info Mike, we are most certainly going to be offering software in the next 2 years...we will definitely have to look at the Empower for ISV program.<br><br>Any chance you are the same Mike Brown that used to work for AP?

Re: Become a Microsoft Partner...get discount on licenses	By www.milliondollarmicro.com on 7/18/2008 3:35 PM
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