The issue surrounding Office Professional Plus 2013 running under Remote Desktop Services (formerly known as Terminal Services) or in a Citrix environment still appears to have much confusion – and unfortunately there isn’t an official line from Microsoft on exactly how this works.
One of my previous blog posts talking about how Office Professional Plus 2013Â can be installed in a RDS/Citrix environment spoke purely to the technical capabilities of the installer. Bear in mind that this was written when the product was still in beta so was not to be taken definitively.
A great post by Jesper Osgaard at Microsoft explains the Product Use Rights customers get when subscribing to Office Professional Plus 2013 as a standalone licence or as part of E3.
There’s been much discussion around this topic in the Office 365 Community, and a recent thread had some great points shared by Chris Clark.
The short version:
– Subscribing to Office Professional Plus 2013 either via standalone Office 365 subscription or as part of the Office 365 E3 suite allows you to use it in a RDS / Citrix environment as one of the 5 allowed licences.
– The installer from Office 365 cannot be used in a RDS / Citrix environment – you can only use Volume License media
– You need to purchase a single licence of Office Professional Plus 2013 via your Volume License agreement in order to obtain the installation media
– This is only available for Enterprise licences not the P2 plan as it uses a small business variant, or the M plan as RDS exceptions don’t apply – however the M is a bone of contention as RDS is not listed as an option in the Service Description but is in the Product Use Rights listing (I am seeking clarification from Microsoft)
UPDATE 1: Another useful link from Microsoft at the US Partner SMB&D TS2 Team Blog on this topic
UPDATE 2: If you obtain Office 365 via a syndication partner (eg. Telstra in Australia) then Reseller Use Rights override the Product Use Rights, and the above does not apply – you cannot use your Office 2013 Professional Plus licenses. You can read more at the Australian Partner Team blog. This is probably the first time I will publicly voice my utter dismay and disappointment with Microsoft on this licensing issue, especially given their recent bad press with regards to their pricing in Australia.
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great! more power to resellers and integrators
VDI confusion in this blog. Windows Terminal Services is not Windows Terminal Server. Remote Desktop Services and XenDesktop are not Windows. Both are a subset of Windows optimized to minimize communications traffic, they operate at the WOW (Windows-on-Windows)(presentation) level. Although many Win32 services are available (like in Safe Mode), Native mode services are not. (LIcensing features are disabled in safe mode.) (Closest MS has to full remote Windows is Multipoint Server.)
Thanks for the clarification Stephen, but I don’t actually mention VDI in this blog post – nor the term “Terminal Server” (that was referring to a previous blog post that was not related to licensing).
This blog post is about the licensing of Office 365 Professional Plus (aka Office Professional Plus 2013) and how it works in a remote desktop environment – not a virtual desktop environment.
Just to be clear, if I had 3x RDS servers publishing Office 2013 Professional Plus. I would need a single volume license of Office 2013 Professional Plus if users hold a Office 365 ProPlus license?
Thank you in advance.