MICROSOFT Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA)

Deliver tailored IT services to your customers through a dedicated or shared hosting environment

The Microsoft SPLA is the licensing agreement under which you can grant access to your Microsoft apps to users outside internal staff and direct customers in many cases.

rhipe will help you by:

  • Facilitating the formal agreements between you and Microsoft
  • Providing you with ongoing licensing scenario advice
  • Helping you network with other service providers to explore opportunities to deliver joint offerings
  • Escalating complex issues to Microsoft on your behalf
  • Collect your monthly usage reports and submit them to Microsoft

SPLA Key Benefits:

  • No upfront costs for software
  • Pay monthly only for what you use
  • Licensing per user, per core or per processor
  • Global reach with services delivered around the world
  • Latest versions of demos, tests and evaluations

Why do you need the SPLA program?

The Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) will benefit your business if your company provides one of the following:

  • Hosts websites using Microsoft software for other organizations
  • Rents out PCs, servers or laptops with Microsoft software installed on them
  • Delivers managed services utilising Microsoft software on customer servers on customer premises
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics ERP
  • allows other organizations to use any of your applications that are built on Microsoft software such as Windows Server or SQL Server
  • Provides services to customers that make available, display, run, access, or otherwise interact, directly or indirectly, with Microsoft licensed Products.

Key Links

  • Microsoft SPLA home page here
  • View usage rights for products under SPLA here
  • Microsoft home page for Hosting here
  • SQL Server 2016 and Windows Server 2016 - Whitepaper here

Microsoft SPLA News & Articles

Microsoft SPLA FAQs

Microsoft SPLA

Simple answer is YES.  Longer answer (with caveats) is:

Partner evaluation & testing

Evaluation and testing of products is allowed for a period of 90 days.
This period begins on the date the SPLA partner first acquires the original media for the product (software or online services).
The partner is required to keep records of such deployment benefiting from this right (see page 8-9 of the SPLA Agreement)
Further information can be found on Page 5 of the SPLA agreement.


9 people found this faq useful.

Simple answer is YES. Longer answer (including caveats) is:

End user demos

A customer may demonstrate its software services for up to 50 prospective end users.
The customer must keep records of all demonstrations including names, and user id’s.
The end user demo period is 60 days.
Further information can be found on Page 5 of the SPLA agreement, & page 4 of the SPLA program guide.


9 people found this faq useful.

The major change is a change in use rights for the Cloud Platform Suite (CPS): Service Providers are required to use Windows Azure Pack “WAP” for provisioning and deployment of a physical or virtual OSE in the Host Fabric.  To see more details of this and other changes please read this post)


5 people found this faq useful.

Core Infrastructure Suite (CIS) DOES include SQL server std edition to support System Center. However you cannot use the SQL component included to support any other line of business applications apart from System Center.  Further details can be found in the Service Provider Usage Rights (SPUR).  Details of how to access the SPUR can be found here.


5 people found this faq useful.

This response relates to Office 365 Proplus, not Exchange Online.. etc.
End users from the same company who have the Office 365 Proplus license can now use the shared computer activation feature and run O365 Proplus from the same hardware.

There are three ways to have O365 ProPlus hosted:

  • Customer self-hosted
  • Through Azure VM
  • Through SPLA partner's physically dedicated platform

7 people found this faq useful.