The downside as you know is that office is a retail instead of volume license, as you have outlined, means you cannot install it on Citrix/TS. Office 365 is a great (apart from not being able to have public folders, now available on office 365 Preview), you have everything online, depending which enterprise plan you have, you also get a copy of office, for the period of your contract.
As soon as I find out more information about the licensing mechanism and benefits / usage rights I will update this post.Ī lot of companies who have in house exchange, with Citrix and office, looking to upgrade are a bit stuck.įirst of all, if you want to deploy office via Citrix/TS, you ideally need SA too, which bumps office standard to £450 + VAT per user, which is rather expensive. This is a fantastic improvement in functionality. Performing a quick test with Office 2013 (thank you Windows Azure for the ability to provision a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 environment in minutes) I was able to download the current preview build from the Microsoft Online Portal, install it and have multiple users configure their Outlook profiles and being communicating. This was due to the fact the desktop suite as part of the subscription service was based on the retail model of license delivery and activation.įor those wanting to deploy Office 2010 onto a virtual desktop environment the only option was due to obtain the product via any number of Open License agreements. While this can be done, it is not officially supported by Microsoft.Ī common frustration with the Office 2010 Professional Plus package available as a standalone or as part of Office 365 E3 is that it does not support installation in virtual desktop environments such as Windows Terminal Services or Citrix XenDesktop environments. UPDATE: I have written a new blog post with further updates and clarification.ĭISCLAIMER: The word “supports” was incorrectly utilised in the blog title.