So your customer wants to use Office 2010 Home & Business in a Remote Desktop (Terminal Server) environment?

J.J. Antequino

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Please let them know that this is not possible.

As you probably know, Office 2010 can be purchased a few ways: PKC, FPP, OEM, or VL…. Do you know what all of those letters mean?  Do your customers?

Office 2010 can only be run in a Remote Desktop (Terminal Server) environment if it is purchased under a Volume Licensing agreement.  The only two versions of Office 2010 that can be purchased under a Volume Licensing Agreement are Office 2010 Standard and Office 2010 Professional Plus.  NO other version of Office 2010 can be licensed to run virtually, including Office 2010 Home & Business.

So now that we’ve got that straight… what else do I really need in order to be properly licensed to run a Volume Licensing version of Office in a Remote Desktop environment?

I encourage you to click the this link and read through: “Licensing of Microsoft Desktop Application Software for Use with Windows Server Remote Desktop Services”

This is a pretty informative Licensing Brief that goes over a number of scenarios.

I will highlight two common ones here:

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Scenario 2: Call Centers With Multiple Shifts

A customer has 100 Windows-based desktops in a call center and would like to use Microsoft Office on all of them using Remote Desktop Services. The workers who sit at these desktops work in three eight-hour shifts, so the 100 desktops support 300 workers. Whenever a shift change takes place, the current worker closes Microsoft Office and logs off of the server so that a new worker can log on and begin running Microsoft Office.

The customer needs to acquire 100 Microsoft Office licenses—one for each desktop from which Microsoft Office is used. Windows Server licenses and Windows and RDS CALs are also required. Device-based CALs may be the right option when the users outnumber the devices.

Note: The number of desktops, and not the number of workers, is important to this licensing scenario.

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Scenario 7: Remote Access From A Home Device

Company employees remotely access a corporate network from home, using desktops that they own. While dialed in, the employees use Remote Desktop Services to access Microsoft Office on a corporate-owned server.

A Microsoft Office license for the version of Microsoft Office running on the server is required for the home desktop in this scenario. The company can enable this scenario by purchasing Work At Home (WAH) Licenses for the employees’ home desktops. Customers with active Software Assurance can also acquire Home Use Program (HUP) licenses for their employees’ home desktops. In addition, customers with active Software Assurance can also use their Roaming Use Rights to remotely access Microsoft Office software from qualified 3^rd party devices. Please contact a Microsoft licensing specialist or Microsoft Volume Licensing Partner for more information about “Work at Home,” ”Home Use Program” and “Roaming Use Rights” options available for Microsoft Office.

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(Did you notice that I highlighted “Software Assurance” )