The adoption of cloud computing implies facing and solving a number of remarkable challenges. The security aspect is probably the most discussed ever but another key point that ISVs, cloud providers and customers have to agree on is licensing.
Licensing of guest operating systems and their applications in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platforms is a critical aspect to consider when evaluating the economics of this technology. And really a few players are actively discussing it.
So it’s with a lot of interest that virtualization.info reports about the activity around Amazon and its Xen-based EC2 IaaS cloud.
Last month Microsoft and Amazon announced a new pilot program that allows their customers to extend their existing Windows Server Enterprise Agreement (EA) licenses, plus Software Assurance (SA), to the instances they have inside EC2.
Last week Red Hat announced something similar with its Cloud Access initiative.
Basically, those customers that have a minimum of 25 active subscriptions and a direct support agreement with Red Hat, can apply unused Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform Premium and/or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server to their EC2 instances.
Those licenses must remain attached to EC2 instances for at least six months.