Licensing Non-Employees To Access Microsoft Products On Your Servers

Many businesses have teams of third-party vendors to assist with their business operations or to provide independent services – like software development or website design – that require access to company servers. For Microsoft products like Windows Server that require additive licensing (usually, Client Access Licenses, or CALs) to support all such client access, the question sometimes arises: How do we license our non-employees to access our servers?

First, there is no prohibition on assigning CALs to non-employees. However, when you are licensing your server software for access by third parties, CALs sometimes are an inappropriate choice due to Microsoft's general prohibition on short-term reassignment of licenses. Microsoft's licensing rules state that "you may not reassign licenses on a short-term basis (within 90 days of the last assignment)," and also: