Microsoft To Back Down On Some .Net Server Licensing Changes

When Release Candidate 2 ships later this fall, Microsoft will rescind a licensing condition that would have restricted the use of the standard server SKU to uniprocessor machines.

Under licensing for the current Windows 2000, companies could deploy the Standard Edition on two- and four-processor boxes. Customers viewed the uniprocessor restriction with .Net as "a take back," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president of the Windows server group Monday.

Although he maintained very few customers ever deployed the standard server on multiprocessor boxes, the change caused a firestorm. "We'll fix it and make it right,' he said.

Taking away capability in a new version of a product that had been offered in its predecessor is bound to make waves, analysts said.

"A lot of people are running [Windows 2000 standard version on four-processor boxes, and when you change that so that they have to have Advanced or Enterprise versions for that box, you will hear about it," said Alvin Park, research director for Gartner, Stamford, Conn.

Another hot issue was whether or not the new Standard Edition would handle multiple directories in a single server, Veghte said.

Windows .Net Server 2003, which is slated to go to manufacturing by year's end and be widely available several weeks after that, will be made available in SKUs analogous to the current Windows 2000 Server offerings.

Standard Edition targets departments and mid-sized businesses; Enterprise Edition is for larger companies with more mission-critical applications; and Data Center Edition is for the most mission-critical situations. The latter two products will add 64-bit support.

Microsoft is still flinching from a public panning of its Licensing 6.0 update, which took effect July 31. Many corporate customers view that program as a de facto price hike and have said they see no compelling reason to upgrade to it.

Microsoft executives from CEO Steve Ballmer on down have acknowledged that the company poorly communicated the licensing changes and that some customers still view the new licenses as too expensive. "We blew it," Ballmer told CRN last June, a month before Licensing 6.0 kicked in.

"The market is very tender around licensing changes. In a perfect world, we would be predictable and transparent to the marketplace" so there would be no downside surprises, Veghte said.

At that time, Ballmer said the company would forge ahead with 6.0 plans, but work on ways to make customers happy.