Perpetual server licenses in CSP

[valeriep]

Would love to hear others' perspective on perpetual licenses in CSP, given that SA is not included.  Without SA, there're no failover / disaster recovery rights or license mobility to Azure.  I realize customers don't often buy SA (no longer an option via OV/OVS) or fail to renew, but if properly advising customer.. how would you position CSP over OV/OVS?

[TamasAkos]

So I'm trying to find any reliable sources, but I'm failing to as of today. If customer buys any product (say Windows Server DC or SQL Server Enterprise) via CSP perpetual, they cannot buy SA only via Open Value for themselves can they - I mean that is not an option is it? @JanoschUlmer you are pretty reliable source of all the information, please help me, where can I find anything exact on this - the only source I could find was this short paragraph: "Perpetual software licenses are licenses for Microsoft products such as Office Pro Plus or SQL Server that a customer purchases in perpetuity and which are installed on the customer's computing infrastructure. In the CSP program, the software is licensed (L only) and does not include the option to add the Software Assurance (SA) maintenance program. Software licenses available in CSP include desktop tools such as Word, Excel, Project, and Visio; Infrastructure servers including Windows Server, SQL Server, Biztalk Server, Biztalk Server; and productivity servers including SharePoint, Skype for Business, and Project Server." 

[JanoschUlmer]

@TamasAkos : Afaik, and confirmed in the SA section of the Product terms, SA only can (could) only be obtained standalone for OEM licenses for a certain amount of days after purchasing the OEM license - however, I would recommend to contact your preferred Microsoft Distributor to double check on this. For CSP perpetual I can confirm that obtaining SA on top is not possible.

[JanoschUlmer]

@valeriep : If customer needs the SA benefits, Perpetual licenses are not the right choice. You could either use CSP Software Subscriptions if the customer does only need Windows Server Standard or SQL Server, or you go for OV/OVS since this is still an option for customer needing licenses for on-premises software with SA.

The main benefit of perpetual is that customer does not need yet another agreement (given they already buy some cloud licenses via you as CSP) - but the disadvantage is that you can't add SA should the customer later realize they need it. So, I would recommend to assess the customer needs carefully - any discussion about benefits of one solution over the other only make sense with respect to specific benefits for the customer scenario. What would be a benefit for one customer, can be a disadvantage for the other.