Most of the software products donated by Microsoft to not-for-profit organisations comes with a feature called Software Assurance that another level of benefits for donation recipients.
Wondering what “includes Software Assurance” means on some of the Microsoft products we have available? If donated software sounds like a great idea, Software Assurance is the icing on the cake.
Software Assurance comes free and adds 2 years of extra benefits on top of the software donated by Microsoft (except for Get Genuine products).
Not-for-profit organisations who receive donated software from Microsoft become Open License customers. Under this license, some of the Software Assurance benefits include:
Free product upgrades
Software Assurance allows you to upgrade to any new versions of the same product line released within 2 years of your initial order. This means if you order the Windows 8.1 Enterprise Upgrade today, any new versions released in the next 2 years will be available to you at no additional cost.
The other great benefit is that even after your initial Software Assurance runs out after 2 years, you will still be able to upgrade to any new versions released during that time.
This presents a great opportunity to plan your upgrades and IT rollouts across a number of years.
Online training for staff
For organisations who may not have time to run a whole-staff workshop on new software or is doing a gradual roll out, you can give your staff the option to learn about the new software with online courses available through Microsoft.
For each license you have received that includes Software Assurance, one person in the organisation may access self-paced interactive E-Learning courses.
Back-up for Disaster Recovery
If you have a server that’s dedicated to disaster recovery, you won’t have to order additional licenses. Software Assurance also allows you to run an extra instance of your licensed instance and related CALs on the backup server.
This also includes quarterly patching, testing and ongoing virtual machine replication from production to backup server.
Yes, there’s more
There are plenty of other features available under Software Assurance including Office Multi-Language Packs, Windows To Go Use Rights and others. For a full run-down on what’s available under the Open License, download Microsoft’s interactive Software Assurance benefits chart.
If you’re planning to use donated software from Microsoft as part of your IT plan, keep in mind the two years of Software Assurance benefits you will also receive.
More info:
- Help and Support: Software Assurance
- Software Assurance for Volume Licensing (Microsoft)
- Software Assurance FAQ (Microsoft)
- PDF: Software Assurance benefits interactive chart (Microsoft)
- PDF: Software Assurance Quick Start Guide (Microsoft)