Microsoft has announced a major rule change regarding its Enterprise Agreements that comes into effect on July 1, 2016, as it slowly drags its licensing model out of the Dark Ages.

As of the above date, business customers that wish to sign an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft will have to meet its new minimum requirement of 500 users or devices, rather than the current 250 minimum. Those with fewer devices or users will instead be pushed to Microsoft’s Product and Services Agreement (MPSA) or its Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) program instead. Those two agreements were rolled out in 2014, having first been piloted with a number of its Select Plus (EA) customers. Now, Microsoft is committed to phasing out its Select Plus volume licenses.

Speaking to The Register, Mark Nolan, director of product marketing for the worldwide licensing and pricing team at Microsoft, said the latest move was being made because customers want to do business with Microsoft “simply”, something that wasn’t always possible with the volume licensing setup.

“The evidence of that is that many of our customers have an EA and they have Open or they have an EA and they have Select, it is cumbersome, it is confusing,” Nolan explained.

The ultimate goal is for Microsoft to have a single “unified approach to volume licensing”, Nolan told ZDNet. The idea is that customers will be able to manage the various licensing agreements they have as if it were just one, he added.

Eventually, Microsoft wants to get all of its customers to use MPSA or CSP agreements for their licensing, however the company said there is no definitive schedule as to when this will happen.

The new Enterprise Agreement minimums come with a few caveats. For one thing, it applied to new customers only, with existing Enterprise Agreement customers being given six years to comply with the new standards. In addition, the new minimums do not apply to public sector customers, who can continue as is. The new rules also don’t apply to Microsoft customers using its Server and Cloud Enrollment (SCE) program. Finally, the new rules do not apply to customers based in countries where the MPSA hasn’t been rolled out.

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