Steve's TS2 Insider

Q: (from Michael)

On Thursday September 20, 2007 I attended the seminar up in Scranton and it triggered, well lets just say a lot of brain activity. Ill get directly to the point. I am the owner of an IT business that sells Managed services to small business’ and the Brake/Fix service to my surrounding community. One of my current contracts are very interested in moving from the 10 computer setup as a workgroup towards actually investing in a server environment for the added security and well yes you already know all the benefits. This is the first time I am actually preparing a full proposal outside what I may have done as a school project in college.  I ended up selecting a dell 2900 PowerEdge server and getting the licensing & cals through them as well. My question is as a partner of Microsoft would I benefit more or shall I say, would my contract and I benefit more by purchasing the software and licensing through a distributer of Microsoft?

A:

It does depend on how you’ve requested to purchase the software from Dell. Potentially the cheapest way to purchase software for a customer is through a volume licensing agreement like Open Business or Open Value. Dell can sell Open Business or Open Value to your customer, but you would not receive any value. If you worked through a distributor like Ingram, D&H, or TechData, you can also sell the Open Business or Open Value, but then you have the opportunity to markup the software along with your services.

To find out more about our volume licensing programs, go to www.microsoft.com/licensing