Hello everyone, I hope I came to the right place to ask my stupid question. I'm currently working in a company that stuck way way back in time. I'm talking some people are still working in DOS level back in time. There is some revamping of this in progres, but it's going to be a long run.
The "IT department" (called computing department, lol) consist basically of 2 people, boss and me. Boss loves the old days, he's "happily" using Win XP on his computer and hates everything newer than Win7, although half of everything he tries to do doesn't work there anymore (and don't even start with security of the OS). Anyway... that's about the company background and what to expect.
During currently ongoing upgrades to get this company at least to 21st cwntury, there will be some sw licencing happening. I'm expecting like buying dozens of Office 2021 keys and some other standalone soft too. But there's problem with managing those keys, as there is no precedence, no rules and everything's going to be from the scratch almost. People are coming and going, PCs are dying (remember, there are still some DOS machines), hard drives replacing, etc. etc. Windows domain? Not in this company. Ever.
So, how do you keep track of what is installed and where? Thank you very much.
If you're buying dozens of Office keys, then a site license for Windows and Office makes a lot more sense.
And those licenses are managed between you and MS. Then it's a simple count of Office installations and you know how many licenses you should be using. You typically do an annual license "true up" with MS.
Or Office 365. Yeah, I know people hate SaaS, but businesses love it. Licensing is flexible and scales up and down as you need it. And you get major updates as long as you have a license, unlike when you buy 2021 Pro Plus or whatever, where you'll always be on 2021.
We recently had discussion on this too and 365 is also a possibility. Nobody wants to deal with MS and their licensing though :-D
Libreoffice it is!
That's what we're using now and where quite some problems come from. I don't have anything against it, it's awesome suite for personal use, but running it in company we constantly run into problems with compatibility. Every partner we're dealing with is using MS Office and when they're exchanging spreadsheets or documents with us it's often pain in the a*s to make it work. And MS is not helping in this...
If you clearly define your needs, it won't be hard to figure out which version you'll want. Then you don't really have to manage those office installations as long as you have enough licenses in the pool.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, you'll likely want to have something to centrally manage these computers, so something like Intune + EntraID to deploy softwares, manage the user account, etc will be an added cost.