Posted by: kurtsh | October 7, 2013

INFO: Getting Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition as a Software Assurance/Volume Licensing customer

imageWe wrote one of our most confusing posts ever on the Windows Blog regarding Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition, so just to be clear:

FOR VOLUME LICENSING CUSTOMERS: 

  • Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition software is NOT AVAILABLE in the traditional ‘Software Assurance’ section of the Downloads & Keys area of the Volume Licensing Service Center.  It’ll be posted there on October 18th.
  • Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition software IS AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD as part of a TechNet Subscription. 
  • If you have Software Assurance on Windows as a Volume Licensing customer, you are granted a TechNet Subscription as a Software Assurance benefit, therefore, if you activate this TechNet Subscription benefit, you can then access the TechNet Downloads site and download it from there.

Yeahyeahyeah, I know.  However, it’s at least available & hopefully this clears this matter up.  I don’t know for certain why things were done this way however from past experience, I suspect it likely has something to do with the exhaustive process required of posting the .ISO on VLSC Downloads, replicating it through our Content Distribution Network (CDN), and storing it redundantly with the TechNet copy of the .ISO.  Understand that these two ‘networks’ are completely & totally separate (there is no overlap at all) and we actually outsource the VLSC to a different company, whereas I believe TechNet is handled internally and consequently a lot more agile.

Anyway, here’s the original post.

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