The License Mobility benefit through Software Assurance is now available to Volume Licensing customers. License Mobility through Software Assurance enables customers to license their server applications on-premises and in the cloud on a service provider’s shared hardware environment, for specific applications.


What is License Mobility?
With increasing adoption of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), customers want to move workloads and applications to the cloud without having to acquire additional licenses. For select Microsoft server products, the License Mobility construct will allow customers to assign certain licenses to a cloud infrastructure for that customer’s use.

Microsoft License Mobility allows Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance (SA) to deploy certain Server Applications in a service provider’s shared hardware environment. A partner providing the shared environment can leverage a single delivery platform to host multiple end customers leveraging the benefits of License Mobility for their dedicated server application instances.

How does License Mobility work?
A customer’s server application licenses can be assigned to run server instances on shared hardware in a Service Providers’ datacenter. However, despite sharing hardware, such server instances must be dedicated to a single customer, and cannot be shared with other customers.

Who is eligible to use License Mobility?
Any Microsoft Volume License customer who has eligible server application licenses covered with active SA may elect to leverage License Mobility. Eligible customers include those under an Enterprise Agreement or any other Volume Licensing agreement where Software Assurance is available. 

When will License Mobility be in place?
License Mobility rights will be effective with the release of the July 2011 PUR.