The company will this September offer the extras either at no-cost or at reduced price to volume customers under Microsoft’s Licensing 6.0 and Software Assurance (SA) programs.

Among the changes, volume customers will be given home use rights to corporate copies of the forthcoming Office 2003, subscriptions to TechNet normally worth approximately $1,000 a head, and access to employee software purchasing plans.

Microsoft senior product manager Harley Sitner said the company wanted to renew its relationship with corporates. He denied, though, the company was giving away software to win customers’ support and was unable to say how much the various programs would cost Microsoft.

I want to focus on adding value. We identified what the most important things were to customers, he said.

Licensing 6.0 and SA caused a backlash among Microsoft’s volume customers with their introduction last August. Licensing 6.0 introduced three-year licensing cycles while SA allowed customers to renew their licensing agreement at a reduced cost, giving customers the right to relevant upgrades launched during that three-year period.

While Microsoft maintained Licensing 6.0 and SA would be more economical for customers, many large businesses surveyed by analysts complained of increased costs.

A large number of customers simply renewed older volume contracts as the door on these older programs closed while surveys indicated many were actively investigating alternative offerings from rival vendors such as Sun Microsystems Inc.

While Microsoft’s top management has accepted customers are unhappy, the company has refused to scrap Licensing 6.0 or SA and instead last November it promised to increase their appeal by adding greater value for customers.

As of September 1, end-users in a company’s SA program will get free home use rights, which Sitner described as the equivalent of one free copy of Office for home use, and get discounts on Microsoft’s other software products.

Customers on SA will get subscriptions to Microsoft’s online training and education resource TechNet, normally priced up to $999 per head, and vouchers will be made available for CTECH training.

Support will also be expanded. Corporates listed as enterprise customers will get business hours telephone-based support while those registered as standard edition customers get web-based support during business hours.

Source: Computerwire