Microsoft Licensing Woes

Like many organizations, my current employer uses the eOpen Microsoft site to manage, download and administer our software solutions. And again like many others, including our reseller, we've been completely mystified by missing licenses and weird counts that don't appear to make any sense.

A quick call to the Volume Licensing Center helpline told us why. Previously Microsoft would send you an e-mail and instruct you on associating a Live ID with your purchased licenses. This Windows Live ID could be different than the business e-mail address associated with the license purchase.

For example: user1@company.com purchases a license for Entourage. They follow the link in the Volume Licensing Center e-mail and associate companycontact@company.com as the license administrator.

That's no longer the case. Now if you are listed as the business e-mail address, you are also the license administrator. This is also retroactive.

Now instead of being able to associate a different Live ID under the eOpen license center, it's automatically added under your e-mail address.

For example: user1@company.com purchases a SQL 2008 Developer license. Regardless of whether that user has a Windows Live ID, or if that ID is associated with a eOpen account, user1@company.com is the license administrator forever. And the license that user1@company.com purchased and associated with companycontact@companycontact.com is now associated with user1@company.com.

Clear as mud right?

So if you're in the situation that we are, where there are several license administrators associated with different licenses and you want companycontact@company.com to manage them all, you must add them as a user on the Microsoft Volume Licensing site.

Now is a good time to post this link, I think.