In my Big Announcement! 50%* Off Up-To-Date (UTD) Discount Extended to Office XP and Windows XP owners worldwide! post on January 1st, I mentioned that the UTD discount provided a 50%* discount for every qualifying license you had.  Since then, I have been seeing and receiving some questions on how the 50%* UTD discount works, like:

• “What do you mean by, ‘Reseller prices may vary?’”
• “As a Partner, do I need to discount my prices 50% because of this and give away that money?”
• “Does my client have to calculate 50% of their payment in year 1 for this?”
• “How do I get the 50%* discount off my cost as a reseller when ordering from my distributor for my client that qualifies?”
• “Is there some form of rebate form my client needs to send in to get their discount sent to them?”
• “I have never sold Open Value Subscription before.  Can I offer this to my clients?”
• And some others…

To address these, and hopefully many other, questions, here is a quick overview on how the 50%* Up-to-date discount works in Open Value Subscription:

Ordering is easy, no there are no complex calculations or rebate forms required, and Partners do not need to give away money to get the UTD pricing

• In Open Value Subscription (OVS), the UTD products have their own part numbers and Estimated Retail Prices (ERP), which are different than the non-UTD part numbers and Estimate Retail Prices for the same product.
  • Example #1:  In the U.S. under Open Value Subscription, the annual part # for Microsoft Office Professional Plus is 269-09648 and the ERP is $163.00.  For the Microsoft Office Professional Plus UTD promo, the part number is 269-09649 and the ERP is $82.00, which is 49.7% lower than the ERP of the non-UTD ERP for Microsoft Office Professional Plus through OVS.
  • Example #2:  In the U.S. under Open Value Subscription, the annual part # for Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade is FQC-02142 and the ERP is $63.00.  For the Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade UTD promo, the part number is FQC-02156 and the ERP is $32.00, which is 49.7% lower than the ERP of the non-UTD ERP for Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade through OVS.
• Based on this, since the UTD discount applies in year 1, you would sell your client Qty. 1 of the UTD part# for every qualifying license they own.  This gets them the UTD discount in Year 1 for their qualifying PCs.  Then in years 2 & 3 of their OVS agreement, you would order and sell them the non-UTD part #s, since UTD only applies in year 1.  Here is visual representation of this:

- Click image for full-size view

“Reseller prices may vary” because customers purchase their Microsoft products from our Partners/resellers, not from Microsoft directly.  Microsoft does not sell our Open Licensing programs, including Open Value Subscription, direct to customers.  Our resellers/Partners purchase these from Microsoft Authorized Distributors, then sell them to their clients, which means the resellers/Partners determine the final prices paid by the clients.  Here are a couple of visuals that show how this works (Click images for full size view):

The UTD discount applies only to PCs with qualifying licenses and yes, you can mix and match for your clients.  For instance, let’s say you have a client in the U.S. that has 58 PCs and 20 have Microsoft Office XP Professional licenses, 19 have Microsoft Office 2003 Professional licenses, and the remaining 19 do not have Microsoft Office Professional licenses.  For this client, in year 1 you would order Qty. 39 of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus UTD part #269-09649 and Qty. 19 of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus Non-UTD part #269-09648 for them.  It is that easy!

Yes, Open Value Subscription and the Up-To-Date Discount are available to small companies.  The minimum number of PCs to qualify for an Open Value Subscription Agreement is 5, so OVS and the UTD discount are available to even very small companies!

Yes, the qualifying licenses for the UTD Discount can be OEM, Retail, or Volume License licenses and yes, you can mix and match.

Yes, every reseller/Partner can offer Open Value Subscription and the UTD discount to their clients.  Contact one of the Microsoft Authorized Distributors today to find out how you can do so if you are not already offering the Open License Programs to your clients.

Yes, the N-1 Up-To-Date Discount is still available on the other Enterprise products through OVS, such as: Core CAL (Qualifier: Any Core CAL), Enterprise CAL (Qualifier: Any Enterprise CAL), Office Enterprise Edition (Qualifier: Office Enterprise Edition 2007), Office Small Business Edition (Qualifier: Office 2007/2003 Small Business Edition or Office 2007/2003 Professional), Small Business Server CAL (Qualifier: Small Business Server 2003/2008 CAL), and Essential Business Server CAL (Qualifier: Essential Business Server 2008 CAL).

I hope this helps address many of the questions you have or have seen about the Up-To-Date Discount.  If not, be sure to let me know.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman – Follow me on TWITTER and RSS
Global Partner Experience Lead
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights