Known as the Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA), this program’s aim is to simplify the licensing agreement between service providers and Microsoft, enabling them to offer more flexible contracts to their customers and a number of additional benefits for both service providers and end users.
The SPLA provides third-party commercial use rights to service providers. As such, the service provider becomes the holder of Microsoft licenses. End customers receiving services deployed on Microsoft software products have no need to obtain their own Microsoft software licenses; they simply use the service provider’s SPLA licenses.
The SPLA enables service providers to license Microsoft products on a monthly basis, meaning they can offer ‘pay as you go’ services, Web services and hosted applications to their customers. In fact, it is the only licensing scheme that allows hosting and application service providers to rent Microsoft software to end users on a subscription basis.