Not much, however, there have been some creative solutions to offering services that leverage the SPLA program. The bottom line is simple, though, when you boil it all down.

1. The provider must own the hardware, regardless of where the hardware is kept.
2. Delivering a desktop OS in a virtualized environment is permitted if:
a. The customer own’s the license.
b. The hardware on which the VM is delivered must be dedicated to that customer.

NOTE: The licensing can be administered by the Microsoft partner, however, the license must be owned by the customer.

So leveraging economies of scale gets a bit troublesome if you’re a large provider.

the morons allow us to provide terminal services with office, but i cant also provide someone a virtual desktop instead of a TS account. give me a break, its the same damn thing…hell..chargem e for hte RDP license as well, i don’t care..but I am pretty much sunk trying to grow my businessuntil Microsoft wakes up and lets us use a Windows 7 VM for SPLA.

http://www.bythebell.com/2010/02/microsoft-licensing-for-vdi-made-really-simple.html?cid=6a01156f01861f970c0133f21ab9f2970b#comment-6a01156f01861f970c0133f21ab9f2970b

I too have been hearing about the VECD and SPLA rumblings online and via Microsoft Partner emails. I do not believe the changes to the VECD licensing model impacts SPLA just yet, but believe that Microsoft’s move on licensing changes is a positive step in our direction.

Thanks for reading!

-rss

Jeff

I didnt say it was practical, just more technically seeing if I understand the SPLA