Clients frequently ask Gartner whether they should license their products under Microsoft's Select or an Enterprise Agreements. What some clients fail to consider is that it doesn't have to be all or nothing; they can license software under multiple programs.

• Choosing between a Select and an Enterprise Agreement (EA) is not a binary decision. It may be more cost-effective to license under both.
• Getting your licensing strategy right the first time will save money and time in the short and long term.
• The full financial impact of any Microsoft licensing model can only be achieved by modeling various usage and deployment scenarios over two to three refresh cycles.
• Licensing through an EA or Enterprise Subscription Agreement (ESA) does not negate the need for strong asset management practices.

• Develop financial models to help choose between license programs or determine which products should be licensed under what agreement.
• Consider licensing under Select exclusively if you refresh your software every five or more years and are not interested in any other Software Assurance (SA) benefits beyond new version rights.
• Consider licensing judiciously through Select those products that you do not want to cover with SA or those desktop products that you do not want to deploy broadly in your organization.
• Consider licensing through a full-platform EA or ESA if you want to standardize on a primary suite of Microsoft products, if you can centralize purchasing, and if you refresh your technology every four years or less.
• Consider a Component EA or ESA is you have mixed software requirements, if you want to standardize on one or two of the three EA or ESA components, and if you refresh your technology every four years or less.
• Consider an ESA if you prefer to rent your software.

We continue to receive inquiries from clients regarding whether they should license their Microsoft products through a Select Agreement or an EA. Many organizations, however, have implemented strategies that embrace both. To build a negotiation strategy, there must be a clear understanding of the different agreements.

Microsoft has various volume-licensing agreements structured to fit different buying requirements. For most midsize and large corporations, governments and academic customers, the following three are used most frequently.

Microsoft's Select Agreement is a volume-licensing program designed for corporate, government and academic customers with 250 or more desktops and mixed product and purchasing requirements. Select License customers receive a volume price level for each pool of products selected (applications, systems or servers) based on a three-year software forecast. Under this program, licenses can be purchased on an ad hoc basis, with or without SA, Microsoft's maintenance program. It's a pay-as-you-go type of volume purchasing agreement that's more suited to organizations that purchase and manage software in a distributed fashion.

Select Agreements provide customers with more flexibility than either of the Enterprise Agreement offerings (perpetual or subscription) because it gives customers the option of choosing or not choosing SA and enables them to license only a subset of their desktops if they choose, rather than all of them.

The Select licensing model is an indirect licensing model, which means you would work with a Large Account Reseller (LAR). The LAR sets the price within ranges established by Microsoft. LARs cannot make contractual commitments on behalf of Microsoft but can help facilitate negotiations. Depending on the LAR, Select prices may include a markup to cover the costs of servicing your account. Markups are typically in the range of 1% to 3%; however, some LARs will offer "cost plus zero," which is also known as the Select, net price.

Microsoft offers a perpetual and a subscription license model for their Enterprise Agreements. The EA and the ESA were designed for organizations that wish to standardize on a primary suite of Microsoft products and can manage and procure their software in a centralized manner. Similar to Select, the EA and ESA are three-year programs available for clients with 250 or more desktops. License offerings are for License and SA (L&SA) only, and, in the case of renewals, just SA.

The EA and ESA are made of up three components: the desktop operating system, the Office suite of applications and a Client Access License (CAL) Suite (see Note 1). These three components are classified by Microsoft as "Enterprise Products." Other desktop or server products (classified as "Additional Products") can also be licensed under an EA or ESA.

Licenses acquired under an EA are, for the most part, perpetual (see Note 2). For Enterprise Products, for the first three years of an EA, you would be required to pay for L&SA for all qualified desktops. If you were to renew your EA, in Years 4 through 6 you would only be required to pay for SA (the renewal price).

In contrast, licenses acquired in an ESA are nonperpetual. Because the ESA only conveys nonperpetual licenses, it is priced less than the EA. This price differential will vary by product but averages approximately 25% less than its perpetual counterpart on an annual basis. However, in Year 6, an ESA may become more expensive than the EA because you would continue to make annual payments that include L&SA for as long as you use the Microsoft products. If you do not renew the ESA, your only alternative is to deinstall the software or buy out the subscription licenses to convert them to perpetual. The current buy-out rate is 1.75 times the price of the ESA.

For commercial accounts, for both Enterprise Agreements, working through an Enterprise Software Advisor, you would have a direct relationship with Microsoft. Because invoicing would be direct with Microsoft, there is no markup to the price quoted. It should be noted that Microsoft pays its Enterprise Software Advisors a fee of between 1% and 7% of the cost you pay for the EA or ESA.

In the case of government accounts and certain counties, you would have an indirect relationship with Microsoft and, similar to Select, you would work with a LAR who would have the right to add a markup to pricing.

What some enterprises fail to consider is that it doesn't have to be all or nothing; they can license software under multiple programs. So, for example, you many want to license some products under an EA or ESA, and for those products on which you don't want SA, license through Select. Many clients are familiar with Microsoft's Full-Platform Enterprise Agreements. However, some do not know that you can also license under what's called a "Component Enterprise Agreement," where you can choose to license any one or two of the three Enterprise Product components (the desktop OS, the Office suite of applications or one of the two CAL suites). This is particularly important for clients that already have license entitlements to Vista and Office 2007 should they choose to forgo the EA renewal for the full platform and continue to use these products for up to five years in the future. In this case, they could renew a Component EA or ESA or one of the CAL suites while dropping coverage on the desktop OS and/or Office suites.

When determining whether to license products under Select or either of the Enterprise Agreements, there are general and product-specific factors to consider. The general considerations will give an indication as to whether your organizational profile fits better with one agreement compared with another. The product-specific considerations will help determine if managing a Select Agreement and an EA or ESA would be more cost-effective, and, if so, which products should be licensed under what agreement.

Both Enterprise Agreements require that you determine, at inception of the agreement, which Affiliates (legal entities) will be covered under the agreement. You can choose to include all Affiliates including new Affiliates acquired in the future or exclude new Affiliates acquired in the future. Alternatively, you can choose to include just some of your Affiliates, such as autonomous or overseas subsidiaries that prefer to buy locally. The one stipulation is that each Affiliate needs to be entirely in or entirely out. Thus, if you do not have the authority to sign an Enterprise Agreement on behalf of the entities that want to participate in the agreement, then the EA or ESA will not be an option for you. You would, however, be allowed to enter into a stand-alone EA or ESA that would exclude all Affiliates.

The pace at which you roll out new software products will bear considerable weight when deciding which Microsoft program to license under. SA is included in the Enterprise Agreements, and gives organizations the rights to the latest version of licensed products as they become available. The cost of SA is fixed at 29% of the license price for desktop products and 25% of the license price for servers. Doing simple math, this implies you will recover your costs in 3.5 years for the desktop and four years for server products. Thus, for organizations that would consider themselves aggressive adopters of technology and are more feature-focused, a Full-Platform or Component EA or ESA would be more appropriate. For organizations that are focused more on benefits and would consider themselves to be mainstream adopters of technology, they would need to evaluate the additional benefits of SA, beyond new version rights (see Section 5 below) to see if an EA or ESA would be beneficial for them. For organizations that are late adopters of technology and tend to refresh software beyond four years, a Select Agreement might be more appropriate.

The stability of your head count base can have profound cost implications if you enter into the wrong license program.

At the beginning of a Select Agreement, you would forecast your product requirements over the three-year agreement. Microsoft classifies products for Select as applications, systems and servers. These product categories are called "pools." Each product in a pool is assigned a point value. Based on your total number of points for each of the three pools, you would be assigned a price level (see Note 3) for each pool. Each year, your Select price level could go up or down for future product purchases based on your actual purchases. So growth or contraction in employee head count will be reflected accordingly in the pricing you receive.

Growth and contraction are handled quite differently in an EA. At the beginning of an EA, for Enterprise Products a client would determine how many devices and/or users would be covered based on an actual count. Annually thereafter, the customer would "true-up" and declare any new devices or users added during the year. True-ups are calculated at L + 2.5 years SA in Year 1, L + 1.5 years SA in Year 2 and L + .5 years SA in Year 3. The EA has no "true-down" provision except in the case of a merger, acquisition or divestiture (see Note 4). This means that if your organization experiences a downsizing or head count reduction, you are still required to pay for those licenses, even though you no longer need use of them (see Note 5). Although the EA is a good, solid offering from Microsoft, many clients have found the way in which true-up charges are assessed and paid for to be expensive for clients with a fluctuating employee base from year to year.

Similar to an EA, at the beginning of an ESA, a client would determine how many devices and/or users would be covered based on an actual count of qualified desktops. Annually thereafter, the client would relicense for just the number of qualified desktops, users and server products required for the following year without worrying about paying the true-up costs embedded in the EA perpetual agreement. The prices for each product are set at the beginning of the three-year agreement and will not change. However, price levels (see Note 6) are reset each year based upon the total number of Qualified Desktops as of the date of each annual order. Thus, if you went from 2,200 Qualified Desktops in Year 1 to 2,600 in Year 2, you would move up to the next price band and reap additional discounts. Conversely, if the reverse was true and you went from 2,600 Qualified Desktops to 2,200, your prices would be reset at the lower band, causing unit costs to increase. Thus, for clients with a fluctuating head count base, an ESA may be more appropriate than an EA.

The EA and the ESA offer a bundle of products and require you to enroll all qualified desktops (see Note 7) for each participating legal entity. Mixing editions of desktop products or CALs is, in most cases (see Section 4.1 below), programmatically not allowed. That said, however, some clients have been able to negotiate for mixed editions and CALs,

In contrast, with a Select Agreement you are allowed to have a mix of product editions and CALs with and without SA. For example, some organizations may have users who only need Windows and Exchange CALs, while others may need access to multiple CALs. Another example would be the edition of Office that you use. Unless you have negotiated otherwise, Office Standard is not programmatically allowed in an EA or an ESA. Office Professional Plus or Office Enterprise are the only two choices allowed under an EA or ESA. Thus, if you have mixed or diverse software requirements, a Select Agreement would be a more appropriate fit.

This is an important consideration for many because of the way in which the three different license programs are structured and billed. Both the EA and ESA are three-year financial commitments. So when you enter into either agreement, you are making a commitment to make predetermined annual payments and, in the case of an EA, annual true-ups for desktops added during the year.

With a Select Agreement, there is no such required financial commitment. A Select Agreement is, for the most part, a "pay as you go" license model. Therefore, you are not committed to making annual payments, but rather you pay for technology, upfront in the month that you need it. You do, however, have the option to spread payments over the term of the agreement if SA was purchased at the time of the license purchase.

EAs and ESAs include the price of SA. Therefore you would be entitled to new versions of products released during the term of your agreement. Conversely, in Select if you elect not to include SA, each time you needed an upgrade to the next version of a product, you would again have to pay the new license price. Some clients like the flexibility of not paying for SA until they need to buy the next version of a product. However, some who make this choice are later frustrated to discover there is no money in the budget at the point they would choose to upgrade, thus lengthening the time between refreshes.

Software asset management (SAM) is an essential ingredient for any Microsoft licensing program; however, for many, the Enterprise Agreements are designed to help ease the administrative burden of license management and compliance. In a Select Agreement, each time you needed new products you would be required to submit an order in the month of acquisition. To prove compliance, you must count licenses. Conversely, in the Enterprise Agreements, for the Enterprise Products, you are counting either qualified desktops or, in the case of CALs, you can elect to cover (and count) qualified users. Unlike Select, you true-up annually for Enterprise Products, thereby minimizing the number of orders submitted each year. Thus, an EA or ESA requires less administration compared with Select. However, good SAM practices are still required.

Many clients mistakenly believe that they do not need as good SAM practices when licensing in an EA or ESA. This is just not so. In fact, we believe SAM practices should be as good, if not better, in an EA and ESA. This is because with only an annual true-up, many clients have found that they lose control over their asset environment due to inattention to monthly purchasing decisions and less restrictive deployment practices. Thus, regardless of the Microsoft program you license under, you must be ever-vigilant through all phases of the asset life cycle (requisition, procurement, deployment, maintenance and retirement) to ensure license compliance.

The specific Microsoft products being used will determine whether you should license them under Select or an Enterprise Agreement. Microsoft offers two full-platform bundles, both of which include Vista Enterprise, an Office suite of applications and a CAL Suite. Clients also have the choice of creating a custom desktop, which would include a mix of Office Professional Plus and Office Enterprise and a choice between the Core CAL Suite and the Enterprise CAL Suite.

Table 1 shows the products included in the Professional Desktop Full-Platform agreement. Table 2 shows the products contained in the Enterprise Desktop Full-Platform agreement.

As you can see from these two tables, there is a lot of technology included in the bundles, some of which may not be a requirement for your organization. However, you are required to enroll all qualified desktops or, in the case of a CAL Suite, you can elect to cover all qualified users (rather than desktops). Therefore, unless your entire organization is using all or most of the features of these bundles, licensing technology under these agreements may cause you to pay more than necessary and create a potential license shelfware problem for the future. For example, many clients will find that a portion of their installed base is only using the products contained in Office Standard (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook). Microsoft does not programmatically offer Office Standard in the Enterprise Agreements. Microsoft will, however, allow a mix of Office Professional Plus and Office Enterprise.

But pay close attention to component and edition pricing compared with bundled pricing. The bundled price of Office Professional Plus in the full platform EA or ESA is less expensive than Office Standard (with SA) licensed through Select.

Besides the full-platform agreements, you also have the option of entering into a Component EA or ESA whereby you would license any one or two of the three Enterprise Product components. You would also be allowed to include additional server or application products in a component EA or ESA. For example, some clients will do a Component EA or ESA that only includes the Core CAL Suite and the associated server products to keep their core infrastructure covered with SA. They might then license Office through a Select Agreement and refresh their operating system (OS) through hardware attrition.

Thus, a Component EA or ESA provides more flexibility then a full-platform agreement and allows you to take advantage of some additional discounts when compared with Select without having to license all three of the Enterprise Products for everyone in your organization. This is particularly useful for clients that want to standardize on some products but have mixed needs for others. You will, however lose the additional discount Microsoft offers for full-platform agreements. This could be as much as an additional 15% for new licenses and up to 5% for renewals (SA only).

If your organization already has the rights to the most current version of any of the products in the Enterprise Agreements (Windows Vista Enterprise, Office 2007, 2007/2008 CALs for Windows, Exchange, SharePoint Server and the Management Licenses for System Center Configuration Manager or System Center Operations Manager 2007), then the value of becoming a new EA or ESA customer for those products is somewhat lessened. If, on the other hand, you only have rights to earlier technology and would like to "get current," an EA or ESA might be attractive, keeping in mind the other considerations outlined in this research.

The most cost-effective method of maintaining client OS licenses has traditionally been through the hardware technology refresh cycle. Many organizations have set standard hardware refresh cycles of between three and four years. If your organization brings in the latest version of the OS on each new PC, and then lets the PC run that OS until it's retired, it's providing for a new OS for each PC during a 36- to 48-month period and, for some, negating the need for SA on the desktop OS.

However, it is important to note that with the release of the Windows Vista OS, Microsoft introduced exclusive features that will only be available to clients covered with SA (see "Q&A on Microsoft Licensing"). This means that the OEM version of Vista won't grant access to Vista Enterprise functionality, or enable you to subscribe to any of the add-on services exclusively available to SA clients such as the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) and Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD). We believe that Microsoft will continue to make enhancements to the MDOP and will also offer additional subscription services available exclusively to clients covered with SA. Thus, if you want to use any of the exclusive features of Vista Enterprise or take advantage of the technologies embedded in MDOP, then you would be required to license SA on every desktop that would take advantage of those exclusive features.

But you do not need to license through an EA or ESA to get the rights to Vista Enterprise. Within 90 days of the purchase of the new PC, you can license SA though Select. You can still license SA through Select beyond 90 days but, in that case, you would need to pay for the upgrade license in addition to the cost of SA. If you are planning on deploying Vista Enterprise to your entire organization, then it will likely be less expensive to do so through an Enterprise Agreement, because Microsoft offers a discount on the desktop OS when licensing through an EA or ESA compared with Select.

Of the three Enterprise Products bundled in the Enterprise Agreements, the Office Suite of applications is the most costly component. For this reason, it is important to understand your organizational requirements for the Office productivity suite. If your organization deploys each version of Office, then an EA or ESA would be appropriate because the SA new version right benefit will give you access to each successive release.

To date, there are no exclusive features embedded in Office 2007 that would require you to purchase SA. Thus, if your organization tends to skip every other version of Office, it will be more cost-effective to purchase the "license only" through Select. However, there is one additional consideration to bear in mind. With the release of Office 2007, Microsoft has begun linking functionality of server products to Office. Therefore, while you may not need another version of Office for the sake of Office, you may need another version to access certain functionality in a server product. We think this deepening of product interdependencies will continue causing clients to rethink the practice of skipping versions of Office.

In addition, Microsoft has also linked features of server products to the higher editions of Office. For example, Office Professional Plus is a pre-requisite for the "Duet" offering from SAP and Microsoft. Thus, if you were licensing Office Standard, you would be required to step up to or relicense the higher edition of Office.

In the case of Select, you can choose which mix of editions of Office you want to deploy for each employee (Standard, Professional Plus or Enterprise). In addition, by licensing Office though Select rather than an EA or ESA, you would be able to take advantage of the Portable Use Rights conveyed in the Product Use Rights document. This right allows the same user to install another copy of Office on a portable device without having to acquire a second license.

Office Professional Plus and Office Enterprise are considered Enterprise Products. Thus, when making a decision on what Microsoft program to license Office under, remember that you will get an additional discount licensing it through an EA or ESA compared with Select, assuming you were going to deploy them enterprisewide and cover them with SA.

To legally access the functionality of Microsoft server products (with some exceptions), your organization needs to have a CAL for each Microsoft product that is accessed. CALs must also be at the same version (or greater) as that of the server product. For example, if you had Windows Server 2008 CALs, you could use them to access Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003. Conversely, if you only had Windows Server 2003 CALs, you would be required to upgrade those CALs to the 2008 version if you wanted to access Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft licenses the Core CAL and the ECAL Suites through Select and the Enterprise Agreements. Because the CAL Suites are considered one of the three Enterprise Products, for new licenses, there is a price advantage by licensing these bundles through the Enterprise Agreements compared with Select. Microsoft also discounts the price of these CAL bundles significantly compared to the individual CAL price. However, because they are bundles of CALs, you may be paying more if you are not using them all. This becomes more apparent when looking at the components in the ECAL Suite (see "Demystifying Microsoft's Enterprise CAL Suite").

When looking at the Core CAL Suite, Microsoft does not programmatically allow just one component of the Core CAL to be included in the EAs. For example, if your organization was not using Exchange, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or System Center Configuration Manager, unless you've negotiated otherwise, you would not be allowed to license just the Windows Server CALs as part of the Enterprise Agreements. You are, however, allowed to license individual components of the ECAL suite in the Enterprise Agreements but the price of the individual components may exceed the cost of the ECAL suite.

Beyond the three Enterprise Product components, many clients will elect to include what Microsoft calls Additional Products within an EA or ESA. Some will do this for ease of administration, while others will do it to as a form of protection of their core infrastructure products. By including them in an EA or ESA, they are entitled to the new version rights. By contrast, in Select, there is always the choice of whether to cover a product with SA. Therefore, in times of budget uncertainty, some clients fear that SA purchased under Select will become a victim of cost cutting, and they may have to fight to upgrade to the next version when they are required to pay the new license price.

There is no price differential between the Select, net L&SA price and the L&SA price you would receive in the EA. Therefore, the only difference in price between licensing Additional Products in Select versus the EA would relate to any markup the LAR would add on to the Select price. You would receive some price advantage in an ESA because the licenses are nonperpetual.

However, in Select, if you were to license L&SA, you would be required to license SA for one, two or three years, depending on what year of the Select Agreement you are in. There is no pro-ration of months allowed. In contrast, in an EA, you would be allowed to true-up at the 2.5, 1.5 and 0.5 rates. Therefore, if you had coterminous Select and EA agreements, the EA would provide an advantage. For example, if your agreement started 1 January 2008 and you added an additional product with SA to a Select Agreement on 1 February 2008, you would be required to pay for three full years of SA in the month in which you acquired it (February 2008), whereas in an EA, you would not have to true-up until the end of the year and, at that point, you would only be required to pay for 2.5 years. Therefore, for products on which you would like to maintain SA coverage, add them to the EA in whatever quantities you wish and true-up once per year. This will ease the administrative burden of monthly true-ups.

Knowing approximately when new versions of Microsoft products will become commercially available has traditionally played an important role in the decision to move toward an EA/ESA or plan product acquisitions through Select. For example, Microsoft just released Windows Server 2008, which completes the refresh of the Core CAL. Thus, anyone with current license entitlements to the Core CAL suite and the associated server products could consider dropping SA on those products or removing them from their EA or ESA at the end of their agreement, thinking perhaps that they won't need another version of these products for another four to five years.

However, with the introduction of Windows Server 2003 R2, customers who didn't have their servers covered with SA were told that they must purchase new licenses to migrate to R2 because it's a full OS, not a service pack or feature pack. We believe this sets a precedent, and Microsoft will begin requiring SA for customers to get rights to new releases of many of its products in the future (in addition to the practice of requiring SA to get new version rights). We believe that Microsoft will continue to introduce interim (R2) releases that will require SA for any product classified as an Enterprise Product in the EA or ESA agreements. Some enhancements to licensing rights, such as the use of licenses on virtual servers, may only be granted to R2 versions. This will ensure that clients will get a new release of each product during the terms of their respective agreements. The implication of this practice is that product road maps become less relevant.

But although road maps may be less important, that does not mean that the timing of releases to your enterprise licensing decisions is less important. Organizations should still be watchful of Microsoft product release dates and compare them with organizational plans for technology rollouts and how they may impact license program decisions.

No analysis of Microsoft's three licensing programs would be complete without a discussion of the benefits of SA. Although it is billed as Microsoft's maintenance offering, there are additional benefits available to clients who license with SA. Table 3 includes a current list of SA benefits by the three product pool types.

In previous Gartner research (see "Determining the Value of Microsoft Software Assurance"), we estimated the value of some of these benefits. We encourage clients to calculate the value of these benefits according to their own expected usage. For example, Home Use Rights and Employee Purchase Program are two popular SA benefits, but it is unlikely that an enterprise would have 100% usage of those benefits. In contrast, most organizations that take advantage of the Training Vouchers benefit consume all vouchers, and many say they would use more if they had them. These benefits are included in the price they pay for SA. Remember that SA is embedded in the cost of an EA and ESA. It is set at 29% of the license price for desktops and 25% for server products. Therefore, if an enterprise is paying for SA and only taking advantage of new version rights, then it is leaving value on the table. Enterprises should consider carefully the value of these benefits to their organizations.

For everyone:

• Before choosing between agreements, consider carefully the factors listed herein. Remember that it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Many clients will find that a combination of agreements will be more cost-effective.
• Prepare an analysis of the software installed base and associated license agreements and entitlements. Include details on contract terms, such as license type, pricing provisions, use restrictions, version release levels and quantities. Develop a realistic assessment of future technology requirements. Use this information to develop a baseline of your specific requirements rather than the predefined bundles. Ask your LAR, Enterprise Software Advisor or Microsoft representative for the Select License-only price, the Select L&SA price and the associated EA or ESA pricing. Remember, just because you do not need all the technology in a bundle, the bundled price may still be more attractive than the price of the individual components.
• Create realistic financial scenarios that span at least six-years or, alternatively, two refresh cycles so that you can determine the financial impact of any licensing decision you may make.
• If you will cover any of the three Enterprise Products with SA for your entire organization, then it will be less expensive to license them through an EA or ESA. If you elect to cover all Enterprise Products with SA, you would then be entitled to the full platform discount available through an EA or ESA.
• Revisit your SAM programs to ensure that you can manage your licenses and entitlements appropriately in whichever Microsoft program you choose.

For clients who refresh the desktop OS through hardware replacement:

• Companies that typically refresh their OS when they refresh their PCs will need to quantify the benefits of each of the features of Vista Enterprise, MDOP and VECD in their environment to determine whether the Windows client makes sense for them. For organizations that need the multilingual user interface (MUI), the only way to get access to that feature is by covering your Windows desktop OS with SA or by licensing Vista Ultimate, which we do not recommend because it is a consumer product.
• If only some users require the MUI functionality and you have no need or desire for the other Vista Enterprise offerings, consider enrolling those specific desktops in SA within 90 days of the purchase of the PC through Select.

For clients who have licensed Office through an EA or ESA:

• For those customers that have licensed Office through an EA or ESA, negotiate for the portable use rights, because these agreements are supposed to offer preferential pricing in return for standardization and predictable revenue streams for Microsoft. If Microsoft does not agree and a large portion of your base needs portable use rights, then consider purchasing those licenses under Select.
• Understand the interdependencies that exist between Office 2007 and any server products you will be deploying.