Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

As of December 9, 2008, the VLSC licensing dashboard includes a notification area for site alerts, a Volume Licensing news and announcements section and links to key tasks.

Accessing VLSC

Designed for midsize and enterprise businesses that accessed their Microsoft License Statements through Microsoft Volume License Services (MVLS) and Microsoft eOpen websites, VLSC provides a simpler interface and more robust features to help reduce time spent on licensing-related administrative tasks.

VLSC offers key benefits for licensed software management: Licensing information, composed of the Licensing Summary and the Relationship Summary.

Licensing Summary

You can use VLSC to view current and past Microsoft License Statements across programs and agreements—all in simple format. 

Volume License Relationship Summary

VLSC includes a report that shows all Volume Licensing agreements associated to a user’s profile.

Downloads
Accelerated download speeds and a simple, secure user interface make it easy and safe for you to use VLSC to find the right product, based on your licensing entitlements.

Product Keys 
 
VLSC makes it easy for you to request product keys for the Windows Vista operating system, enables retrieval of volume license keys for all Microsoft licensed products, and provides access to technical support.

Centennial Software has announced a free one-hour license management webinar designed to help organizations understand the critical aspects of successful software compliance and SAM. The event will look at initial planning, through to the first audit and finally matching up installed applications against recorded licenses.

Find our more about the event here.

Centennial recently launched an initiative called Centennial SAM Academy which is a demonstration of our commitment to help customers to get the most out of their investment in Centennial technology for specific solutions in this case Software Asset Management.

Technology has a role to play in a SAM solution but any customer expecting technology to deliver them SAM will be disappointed. SAM is about technology, people and procesess. We now have technology in market that will automate a lot of the tasks required to understand an organization’s software compliance position and to manage software compliance as part of a SAM solution but without sound processes to complement the technology there is a risk our customers will believe our technology has not delivered.

Centennial SAM Academy should help customers understand what processes they should adopt to ensure success with a Centennial based SAM solution and what SAM Partner services may be required to achieve success.

Centennial SAM Academy is a set of courses aimed at building a customers knowledge of SAM in general but also to give specific guidance using Centennial products in a SAM or compliance project.

The cornerstone of the Centennial SAM Academy is Centennial SAM Essentials .
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Microsoft’s new Get Genuine Windows Agreement (GGWA see http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/) allows big companies that are discovered to be intentionally or accidentally pirating Windows XP Professional to quickly purchases copies via a reseller.
GGWA is part of a recent wave of antipiracy and license compliance efforts that Microsoft is targeting at big corporations, its most profitable segment.

Organisations have largely been exempt from past antipiracy efforts, which focused on software crackers and pirates distributing stolen license keys, resellers trying to save money by reusing the same licence key with multiple customers and consumers.

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