Office 2007 or 2010 Volume Licencing

[Ignatius]

I work with a small business that has 5 PCs on site and maybe 12 staff who own their own laptops that they have for personal and business use. Many use Office 2003 and I'm keen to get them all using Office 2007 or, perhaps, Office 2010. I know that I could recommend that they all purchase a standard retail Office 2007 or 2010 but I wonder if Volume Licencing might be possible or even appropriate. Does anyone know the approximate cost if I wanted to get a Volume Licence for about 15 PCs/laptops?

 

A supplementary question - as the laptops are the personal property of the staff but are used in the business, would it be appropriate to ask them for a fee to contribute to the cost of the Volume Licence so long as the business didn't make any profit by this process? My gut feeling is that this may contravene one or more of the many regulations that seem to exist around licencing but I'm sure that someone will know much more about this than I do.

Edited December 8, 2010 by Ignatius

[Kitkatninja]

The education sector has different prices and can different features, however the type of license that you'd want to look at (as you're a small business) is Microsoft Open License, see here. You can go for that as long as you have at least 5 machines.

 

You can check out further documentation regarding licensing here.

 

I'm not a licensing specialist, so contact your local MS License reseller for specific info for your organisation

 

-Ken

 

Edit:

 

...A supplementary question - as the laptops are the personal property of the staff but are used in the business, would it be appropriate to ask them for a fee to contribute to the cost of the Volume Licence so long as the business didn't make any profit by this process?...

 

Double check, you may need to utilise the Home Use Program (HUP) from Microsoft as the machines themselves aren't the property of the organisation (which there is a small fee for). But like I said, I'm not a licensing specialist.

Edited December 8, 2010 by Kitkatninja
more info

[somabc]

You will have trouble with Licences if you do not own the machines, are you intending on giving the Licences to these people so they then own the software?

[Poco]

hi ignatius,

 

i would advise against using licensing with machines that you do not own. there are surrounding issues which can get very complicated for the sake of saving a bit of cash.

i would advise buying Home & Business 2010 retail which is product code: T5D-00159. DO NOT get the PKC version which is cheaper as it wont work unless you have 2010 starter pack currently installed. You can expect to pay around £160 per user from your preferred reseller.

[Ignatius]

I'm grateful to everyone for the comments. *IF* we tried to go down the volume route, I wouldn't envisage giving them a copy of the installation media but they would be able to retrieve the installation key without too much difficulty.

 

It seems that my suspicion about licencing problems as the laptops are owned by the individuals, rather than the business, was correct. If they had been, I think it would have been (relatively) plain sailing! I'll discuss the recommendations proposed in this thread with someone in authority at the business (i.e. holder of the wallet).