Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft today gave fair warning of an additional offering in its myriad volume purchasing plans called Select Plus which will be available in Fall 2008:

Select Plus is a natural add-on to customers’ existing Enterprise Agreements and an alternative to the traditional Select License to consolidate transactional purchasing across multiple agreements. Customers can easily purchase and manage additional licensed products and services on a per-project basis as well as instantly qualify for the next discounted price level through increased purchase volume. Because Select Plus agreements never expire for transactional purchases, customers can experience more flexibility while eliminating the need to renegotiate and renew their contracts.

There are more details as well as comparisons to existing plans at the Volume Licensing section of the Microsoft Web site. Not unexpectedly, there are pluses and minuses to Select Plus which Eric Lai assesses at Computerworld. If your enterprise is large enough to consider Select Plus, you undoubtedly have a purchasing department for whom the tradeoffs will be grist for their mill.