There’s been a lot of chatter about our usage of "activation" recently.
The bottom line is that Microsoft is gradually moving away from "serial number-based" license enforcement in favor of product activation – hopefully everyone’s figured that out by now. And what’s more, 57% of all software vendors JUST LIKE US are doing the exact same thing in 2007, and we’re just one of them, so if you think we’re an issue, I’d look at your corporate-approved software list really carefully and prepare yourself for 2007.
The good news is that because Microsoft covers a broad spectrum of products that customers commonly use, you can be sure that we’re doing our best to unify & optimize the activation process for all our products using the exact same methodology & the exact same activation systems across the board. This means that our goal will be that all Microsoft products activate in the same fashion using the same process and the same type of activation keys & corporate "Activation Servers" or Clearinghouse Services on the Internet without confusion.
This means: One Activation Server installation (or two for redundancy)… one DNS domain to authorize at the firewall… one port to open on workstation firewalls… one methodology to educate IT folks about.
Here’s a clipping from a report from SoftSummit on the topic of Activation’s prevalence:
This is a from a free report that was delivered at SoftSummit. Read the whole report yourself.
http://www.softsummit.com/pdfs_registered/SW_Pricing_Licensing_Report_2006.pdf
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 