I realize that not a lot of people have heard about the ISV Royalty Program here in Singapore. The program is available to ISVs and what this allows you to do is license Microsoft products as part of your unified solution, that way, you can be your customers one stop shop for getting your software as well as the Microsoft licenses required to run it.

There are 2 license types offered:

• ISV License is the default license type which allows you to integrate Microsoft licensed products and be licensed as part of your solution. This type of license will also allow your end users to use the underlying Microsoft licensed product with other applications as long as they are still licensed for your application.
• ISV Run-time License is available for some products (SQL Server, BizTalk Server and Speech Server). These are more restrictive in a sense that your users can only use these applications with the solution they acquired from you and they cannot use the Microsoft licensed products to run any other application or to develop new applications. Because of these restrictions, Microsoft is able to provide the ISV with a much lower cost for the licenses giving them a higher profit margin or the ability to give a lower price point in order to be competitive.

So, what’s required you ask? You can find the comprehensive details in the ISV Royalty Licensing Program Guide but the key requirements are the following:

1. Develop a unified solution – Build an application/solution on top of Microsoft Licensed products (see http://www.microsoft.com/isvroyalty for a list of licensed products) and distribute your solution a tangible media format.
2. Comply with the Microsoft license terms – incorporate any applicable Microsoft license terms into your End User Agreement for your solution.
3. Provide technical support – You are responsible for providing technical product support for the Microsoft licensed products included in the unified solution to your end users. To ensure the proper support level, you must do either one of the following:
   1. Enroll in the Microsoft Partner Program at the Certified Partner level or above at https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40011313.
   2. Purchase a minimum of five technical product support incidents for the licensed products used in your solution, either from Microsoft or from a Gold Certified Support Partner. To purchase the incidents from Microsoft, please visit: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;OfferProPhone or http://www.microsoft.com/services/microsoftservices/srv_support.mspx.
4. Provide monthly reporting on software licenses – once you are in the program, submit either a monthly royalty report or zero royalty report for all licenses that you or your affiliates distribute to your end users.
5. Revenue Commitment – commit to a minimum of US$15,000 in royalties paid to Microsoft over the 3 year period.

Want to get started? Drop an email to isvroy@microsoft.com today!

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