Important change to MOSS 2007 for Internet Sites (MOSSFIS) licensing
For those of you who know me, you know I love the technology AND the business side of SharePoint. So, when we discovered that some of our licensing was hampering your deployment architectures, we immediately got to work remedying the situation. For those of you who know how our licensing works, you know that you couldn't deploy an Intranet and Extranet in the same SharePoint farm because of the licensing. However, we built SharePoint from a technology standpoint to run Intranet, Extranet and even Internet sites all in the same farm, even on the same server! We worked lots and lots of special deals to help customers get changes to their individual licenses but that didn't help our broad community of customers.
I'm happy to say that beginning Sept 1st, we made a change that makes running MOSS Server Licenses and MOSSFIS legal in the same farm. So, let the deploying begin! One thing to realize is that this does not reduce the number of licenses you need to buy. So, if you're running MOSS Server licenses and MOSSFIS on the same farm, you still need to buy both licenses as well as the correct number of client access licenses (CALs) for your internal users.
Does your brain hurt yet from all the licensing mumbo jumbo? Well, to make hurt even more, I'm including a link to our licensing FAQ, product list where the change took place and the actual legalize from the product list so you can read through it at your leisure (bedtime makes a perfect time!).
Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites
Accommodation for simultaneous use of server software under Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites:
The same software is licensed under Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites under different use rights. Office SharePoint Server 2007's use rights support private intranet sites and require CALs for licensed access, while Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites does not require CALs, but does require that all content, information and applications be accessible through the internet to non-employees. Please refer to the Product Use Rights (PUR) document for these products' use rights.
As an accommodation for possible deployment scenarios, customers wishing to consolidate their SharePoint needs under a single deployment may acquire licenses for both products, assign those licenses to the same server, and use the same running instance of the software simultaneously under both licenses. However, customers must acquire CALs as required under the Office SharePoint Server 2007 use rights for users and devices accessing content in any manner not permitted under the Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites use rights.
As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. We're working hard to make sure SharePoint meets all your needs, both technically and business/licensing wise. If you don't tell us what you need, we can't build it so keep the feedback coming. I know none of you are shy. :-)
Tom Rizzo, Director of Product Management
