Minnesota based FLABBERT (name changed) – a surgical instrument company and an Katalyst customer, found it difficult to transition its SharePoint site on the cloud. The Microsoft Volume License (VL) program they had, allowed them to deploy all their licenses in Katalyst datacenter, with the hardware and applications hosted in a dedicated set up. Managing the increasing workload on the SharePoint platform was getting expensive in a dedicated environment. They were looking for a way out to save licensing costs, yet move the site on the cloud. Katalyst helped them achieve their goal without them having to pay extra for moving the licenses to cloud.
The Situation
FLABBERT (name changed) was hosting its SharePoint 2007 site on an Katalyst dedicated environment. It’s a surgical instruments manufacturer that caters primarily to biomedical and life sciences companies and boasts of a 100+ product catalogue. More than 1100 users access the SharePoint instance daily. They have been operating with a Microsoft Volume License (VL), with all their licenses deployed in Katalyst datacenter at New Jersey, USA. With an increasing client base and operations expanded across 5 global locations, the heavy workload on the site was slowing down the business. Moving to the cloud was faced with resistance, considering 1100 licenses had to be moved – it seemed like an overwhelming task.
That’s when Apss4Rent – a Microsoft Authorized Mobility Partner suggested them repurposing their existing licenses acquired under VL to the cloud with Microsoft License Mobility through Software Assurance program.
The benefits were Katalyst – by merit of using a shared infrastructure, they would leverage the economies of scale that cloud offers; and save licensing costs to move the SharePoint workload on the cloud.
“Katalyst suggested us bringing our VL licenses to cloud, to lighten the workload on the SharePoint site. We didn’t have to pay extra fees for moving the licenses. As a Microsoft Authorized Mobility Partner, they are experts in handling all the groundwork in managing the transfer of licenses and setting up the infrastructure on the cloud. It was a business-critical task which they made look easy.”
Katalyst Offers Its Expertise In Moving Existing Licenses To The Cloud
Katalyst has been managing the SharePoint 2007 server for Flabbert since 2009. It’s been a while that the increasing workload on the application server warranted the move to the cloud. Our expertise is managed cloud solution ensured that the site was running uninterrupted all these while despite the challenges. But it came to a point where our experts decided to push the client to move the hardware from the dedicated environment to the cloud. The client conceded.
With License Mobility through Software Assurance, we started deploying the SharePoint application server on our shared hardware infrastructure.
Under the Volume Licensing terms, we created access to the server instances for their Client Access Licenses (CALs) with active Software Assurance, on our data center. For the remaining licensed that could not be migrated (like Windows server operating system (which requires a SPLA license)), we deactivated the same on the dedicated environment.
The client could now deploy its SharePoint Server Volume License instances from our dedicated server to the virtual machines running in our hosted cloud environment.
We ensured that the client meets the eligibility criteria – active Software Assurance must cover the Microsoft Application SharePoint Server licenses. We seamlessly moved the licenses to our environment without the client having to pay up again for renting the licenses. We reassigned all the licenses within a single cloud server farm. Further, we gave full administrators’ rights to the environment to the client’s internal IT team, to help them out with the Microsoft SAM audits for the license verification procedure.
Benefits Client Gained
Flexibility:
- The client could move application server workloads to Katalyst’s IaaS offering without paying for additional licensing.
Cost effectiveness:
- The client could take advantage of existing licensing investments when deploying to the cloud
- The client could capitalize on a lower-cost service provider’s infrastructure platform such as Katalyst’s.
“It’s important to work with experts when implementing mission-critical tasks such as moving licenses to the cloud. Katalyst is a trusted partner for us. We were confident that with them, the migration would be as easy and simple as it can get.”
