Do I need to include my LOB PCs in my count of total computers to meet the company-wide requirement for Open Value Subscription?

As noted in several of the Open Value Subscription posts to date, one principal of Open Value Subscription to remember is that your initial agreement will be a company-wide agreement (meaning one license per computer in your company) for at least one of the Enterprise products. A question that has come up in several of the presentations I have been giving is, “What if my client has several line of business computers that only run their proprietary LOB application and are not used by people as desktop computers? Do we need to include those in the count of total computers inside the company when figuring out how many licenses we need to acquire to meet the company-wide requirement for a new Open Value Subscription Agreement?”

The answer to this question is, “No, you not need to include LOB-only computers in your count for the company-wide requirement of Open Value Subscription.” Why? When you count the total number of computers in the company, you are actually counting the total number of qualified desktops. Here is the definition of a “qualified desktop:”

Qualified Desktop
Refers to the personal desktop computers, portable computers, workstations, and similar devices that are used by and for the benefit of an organization. Qualified desktops do not include computers designated as a server, any system dedicated to run only line-of-business software, or any system running an embedded operating system.

So as you can see, computers designated dedicated to run only line-of-business software, do not count as “qualified desktops” and; therefore, do not need to be included in the total computer count when completing the Open Value Subscription Agreement order.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman
Microsoft US Senior Manager
Small Business Community Engagement
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

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