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Microsoft Volume Licensing – What Is It & How Does It Work?

It is a general concept among various people that Microsoft Volume Licenses are very expensive and only large companies with huge budget can afford to have them. This is not really true, as there happens to be quite a few ways through which people are able to get Microsoft Volume License for a much cheaper price.

mircrosoft volume licensing

You must have known about the fact that Microsoft had removed its most popular add-in of Microsoft Excel, Power Pivot from the basic installation. Previously it was free and available within the normal Excel. But in the Excel 2013, they have removed it completely forcing the users to buy that add-in separately or get a Volume License to get this add-in with it.

This is a Marketing strategy and Microsoft Engineer`s don’t have to do anything with this, Jelen says:

“My friends, who create Excel, did not do this. They’re engineers. They’ve created great products. I appreciate those products; you’ve seen me rave about those products. It’s someone else, high up, who puts the packages together, who made what I believe to be the world’s worst mistake… well, certainly in the top five.”

The reason why they have allowed users to get the Power Pivot only with Volume License is to incite people to buy those volume licenses in order to avail the product completely. I have seen Microsoft Excel`s volume license being sold at a price of 173 USD on cdwg.com.  Now there wouldn`t be many individuals who would like buy the volume license of Excel on that price.

Normally, there is a minimum requirement of 5 copies on Microsoft Volume License and to get a valid VL contract. So the normal conception is that, if you want to have the Power Pivot tool for your copy of Excel, you will actually have to buy 5 copies of Excel.  So what if you don’t want to get in this trap and want to get your hands on these VL licenses without having to buy a full pack? There is a way around, that seems to work for a lot of people and if you give it a try, it might work for you as well.

The fact is, in order to get this all-important Volume License, you don’t have to buy 5 copies of same product/software/ you can buy 5 different products that are being sold under the VL program. You can make this “FIVE” in a combination of products. Furthermore, once you have got the contract of Volume Licensing with Microsoft, you can buy more products later without having to meet this “5 purchases” requirement. Hence, the minimum license clause is valid only for the initial contract, which makes it a perfect deal for large corporations as they can continue buying more products for their new resources without having to buy the full pack of 5 products again and again.

Since you can get a volume license by buying different products you can opt for 1 Excel 2013 (costs 173$) and DVD Playback Pack (costs 7$) hence the total cost of this Volume License would be 201$ only.

Author Bio

Maegan Pulman is a freelance IT consultant and technology enthusiast. She is active in local and international IT events and is always on the lookout for the latest industry trends.

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1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. myles

    May 31, 2013 at 3:27 am

    A very good post there, about explaining the terms Volume licensing and good explanation there about how it works. Thanks. 😉

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