Windows VDA Licensing | Vendor

Question

I'm interested in obtaining comprehensive information regarding the licensing options and potential restrictions for Vendor/Contractor Licensing. Below is a summary of one specific scenario:

There is a vendor/contractor from organization A who is working on behalf of organization B. Organization B employs these vendors for testing purposes. In an effort to minimize expenses and streamline operations, including travel, onboarding, and lodging costs, Organization B is considering the creation of generic accounts. These accounts would be made accessible whenever there is testing requirement.
Organization B intends to grant access to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) exclusively to POC users from Organization A.

Organization B is planning to allocate VDI licenses, either Windows E3/E5 per user or VDI per Device licenses, to these generic accounts. Importantly, the users accessing these generic accounts should have licenses that are either equal to or higher than those assigned to the generic accounts.

If User from Org A have higher licenses than generic account, Will that work or do they need to have the license from Org B only.
I'm interested in exploring the available options in this context.

Thank you for your assistance.

Answer 1

Generic Accounts: Microsoft's licensing terms generally discourage the use of shared or generic accounts for multiple users. Each individual user should have a unique user ID, primarily for compliance, security, and licensing reasons.

Windows E3/E5 Licenses: Windows E3/E5 licenses are per-user licenses. This means they are assigned to individual users and allow the licensed user to access the service from any device. If you're using generic accounts, this licensing model could pose a problem since it would be challenging to determine which user is accessing the VDI at any given time.

VDI per Device Licenses: This model licenses the device rather than the user. If Organization B intends to use VDI per Device licenses, they should ensure that each device accessing the VDI has a license. However, remember that the concept of "generic accounts" is still problematic.

Licensing Hierarchy: Generally, if a user from Org A has a higher-tier license than the generic account, they technically have access to the features of the lower-tier license. However, this doesn't solve the problem of using generic accounts, which is the core of the issue.

Licensing Across Organizations: If a user from Org A is accessing resources in Org B, the license for accessing those resources should ideally be provisioned by Org B, especially if they're using Org B's infrastructure and services. While the user's license from Org A might technically allow them access to certain features, it may not be compliant for them to access another organization's resources without the appropriate licenses from that organization.

best regards,

iohann gessenay