Get Microsoft Office Professional Plus for $25 net first year payment

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Last week I posted that The Big Easy Partner Subsidy offer is now live and pointed you to several of the resource available for the Big Easy. Why is it so important that you know about the Big Easy and how to use it? Here’s just one example: How about being able to get your clients Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 for just $25 net first year payment?! Think that could make for an easier conversation with your clients wondering if now is the time to upgrade or not? Here’s how it works:

image As you should know by now, Microsoft Office Professional Plus is one of the Enterprise products available through the Open Value Subscription program. Plus, if you follow the Blog or have attended any of my Open Value Subscription sessions, you by now have also seen that because Microsoft Office Professional Plus is an Enterprise product, clients can take advantage of the Up-to-date discount for it if they have existing OEM, Retail Box, or Volume Licenses of Microsoft Office Professional 2003 or 2007. In addition, you would have seen my Open Value Subscription Partner pricing and part number Cheat Sheet which shows you that the Estimated Retail Price (ERP) for the Microsoft Office Professional Plus annual payment through Open Value Subscription is: $179 without the Up-to-date discount and $90 first year with the Up-to-date discount.

This means if your clients have OEM, Retail Box, or Volume Licenses of Microsoft Office Professional 2003 or 2007 and they enter into an Open Value Subscription Agreement for Microsoft Office Professional Plus, they would qualify for the $90 first year ERP through the Up-to-date discount for those licenses. Once they make the purchase, you should be taking them to the Big Easy Promotion page and having them submit for their Partner subsidy check. If you go out to the Big Easy Promotion page and look at the Partner subsidy calculator, you will see that the Partner subsidy amount for Microsoft Office Professional Plus through Open Value Subscription is $65 each. I have included a screen shot above to show this.

So let’s do the math… Your clients with existing OEM, Retail Box, or Volume Licenses of Microsoft Office Professional 2003 or 2007 qualify to get Microsoft Office Professional Plus for $90 each first year payment through the Up-to-date discount. They would then qualify for an $65 Partner subsidy check from Microsoft for each one they purchased. So, $90 - $65 = $25 first year payment for each Microsoft Office Professional Plus license through Open Value Subscription. If they did not qualify for the Up-to-date discount, they would still be getting Microsoft Office Professional Plus for $179 - $65 = $114 first year payment. That’s almost like getting the Up-to-date discount without having to have the prior version! Plus, this not only gets them Office Professional Plus 2007, they also will receive: three years of upgrade protection (so if a new version of Office comes out, they automatically have rights to the new version upon release), Office Home Use Program (providing them with Microsoft Office licenses to use at home), an Employee purchase program (which allows employees of the company to purchase Microsoft items such as software, hardware, X-Box 360 games, Zunes, and more at a greatly reduced rate for personal use), and eLearning courses (electronic learning courses to learn how to use the software they are licensed for and the features included in the software). Depending on how many PCs they have in their company, they may even qualify for free training vouchers for in-person training courses and Information Work Value Discovery Workshops.

Another benefit your clients will receive by taking advantage of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus through the Open Value Subscription program + Big Easy subsidy is that it makes their licensing easy! (Yes, I did use Microsoft, licensing, and easy all in the same sentence) They simply place one order per year and they're covered. It doesn’t matter if they add new PCs during the year at any point, it’s still just one order per year and you’re covered. Check out my “Install software on new PCs without paying for it? Yes, through the Open Value Subscription annual true-up process, you get this flexibility” post to see how this works.

So to get back to the original point of this post… Yes, your clients can get Microsoft Office Professional Plus through Open Value Subscription for $25 first year payment after the Up-to-date-discount and the Big Easy Partner subsidy promotion. Just a hint… Office Professional Plus isn’t the only “great deal” out there right now with first year payments that would surprise you. I will again suggest you download my Open Value Subscription Partner pricing and part number Cheat Sheet then head out to the Big Easy Promotion page to play with the calculator to see what you truly can offer your clients between now and December 31, 2008 when the Big Easy Promotion ends. You can also download an offline version of the Big Easy Calculator so you can configure the Partner Subsidy amounts on your computers while sitting in your office or while at you client’s office talking with them offline.

Want to hear how some of your peers are using Open Value Subscription and Big Easy to grow their businesses successfully today and how using Volume Licensing can have big impacts on your services business? You may want to check out the following:

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman
Microsoft Senior Manager, Community Engagement
US Partner Strategy, Marketing and Programs
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

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