What qualifies for the Office Up-to-date 50%* discount (UTD) now that Office 2010 is out?

In January, I put up a post announcing the expansion of the Up-to-date (UTD) 50%*discount offer through Open Value Subscription being expanded to include two prior versions (N-2) through June, 2010 as well as “How the Microsoft 50%* Up-to-date discount works.” In the announcement post I included the information below on what versions of Office qualified for the N-2 offer then and what would change once Office 2010 was released:

• For Microsoft Office Professional Plus:
  • Before the Office 2010 launch: Companies with OEM, Retail, or Volume licenses for Microsoft Office 2007 Professional, Office 2003 Professional, or Office XP Professional
  • After the Office 2010 launch: Companies with OEM, Retail, or Volume licenses for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 or Office 2003 Professional

Now that Office 2010 is available to all Volume Licensing customers, I received an inquiry from a Partner for an updated chart on what qualifies for the up-to-date discount at this time during the N-2 promotional period (which ends in June, 2010). As such, here is the updated chart showing what qualifies for the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 N-2 UTD offer now that Office 2010 is available:

For those of you asking yourselves, “Wait, does this mean that Office XP no longer qualifies?” The answer is, “Yes, that is precisely what this means.” As stated in my original N-2 announcement post, N-2 means that the only versions that qualify are the current version (N) and two versions prior (N-1 and N-2). With the release of Office 2010, the current version now is Office 2010. This makes N-1 Office 2007 and N-2 Office 2003. At this point, Office XP has become 3 versions old (N-3), so it no longer qualifies for the N-2 promotion.

With this in mind, you might also want to consider that as I announced in January, the N-2 promotion runs through June, 2010. After that point, the promotion ends and we return back to the standard N-1 qualifying versions for the UTD discount through Open Value Subscription. As such, the N-2 versions would no longer qualify (Office 2003 versions), so only the N (Office 2010) and the N-1 (Office 2007) versions will qualify. What this means is, if you have clients on the 2003 versions of Office today, you should really have a conversation with them prior to June to see about taking advantage of the N-2 promotion for their business to take advantage of the savings it provides as well as the other benefits of Open Value Subscription. (I have many of the benefits included in this post).

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman – Follow me on TWITTER, LinkedIn, and RSS and see “What I’m thinking”
Global Partner Experience Lead
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

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