How to license Microsoft Office on the iPad

Microsoft Office licensing on the iPad – easier than ever

In an innovative – and potentially disruptive move – Microsoft will make the licensing of the recently released ‘Microsoft Office for iPad’ easier than ever.

The move is a response to critics of Microsoft’s Licensing Models who argue that calculating compliance with Microsoft is complex and unnecessarily costly for the majority of organizations.

“We’re keen to make our licensing easy to understand”, said Colin Beelzebub, Senior Vice President of Licensing Strategy at Microsoft.

Think Mobile, Think Simple

Calculating license entitlement for Office on the iPad is simpler than ever:

1. Take the Angry Birds high score from your CIO’s iPad
2. Multiply it by the number of iPads in your organization

Peter Hofmann, licensing lead at Munich City Council and co-Chair of the Bavarian Microsoft appreciation society said: “Whoa! Easy-squeasy! Sign me up!”

(Note: organizations entitled to Academic pricing must take the entitlement above and multiply it by the square root of the Nigeria’s GDP in 1977-1978.)

Limitations and ‘Mobility’

Unfortunately, whilst this is a great step forward in the transparency of mobile device licensing, the new scheme is not without limitations.

(Note: iPad Mobility – if the IPad is ever switched on or in use – Microsoft calls this ‘Mobility’.)

If organizations want to take advantage of Microsoft Office on the iPad with Mobility enabled – that is, with the iPad switched on, they will need a ‘Microsoft Internet Services Enterprise Roaming Yodel’ (MISERY) subscription bridging-license upgrade entitlement pack service.

To calculate entitlement for the MISERY subscription, organizations must take the Angry Bird’s quotient outlined above and multiple it by Core Roaming Actualization Parameter (CRAP) factor.

Microsoft has stated that due to security reasons CRAP is only released to privileged individuals who are trained in MISERY, stay tuned for updates by watching for smoke signals over the Gobi dessert.

News source: technet.microsoft.com/