Volume licensing

A very small number of software vendors specialize in brokering such transfers in order to allow the selling of volume licenses and keys.

in which Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange Server and Skype for Business Server products are licensed based on the software as a service (SaaS) model: In exchange for a monthly subscription fee, software, its updates, support for them, provisioning, administration, licensing and additional services are all provided through an online web-based dashboard.

In this scheme, licensed apps communicate recurrently with Microsoft over the Internet; as such, a product key needs not be issued to the user.

Instead the administrator needs to sign up for Microsoft account, which holds details such as licensed apps, their number, and payment methods.

As with the Office 365, a user account registered with Adobe is all that is required to authorize software and store payment information.

Several security consultants have condemned the move by Microsoft, saying that leaving a large install base unpatched from various security holes is irresponsible because this unpatched install base can be leveraged in large scale Internet attacks, such as Trojan horses used to send spam e-mail.

Users of existing installations of Windows XP can also change their product key by following instructions from Microsoft.

[7] A volume license key that was commonly used to bypass product activation in early versions of Windows XP was FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8.

[9] The key is now obsolete, as it has been blacklisted by Microsoft since August 2004, and affected computers will display a WGA notification.

[10] It was made famous partly because it featured in a popular image circulated on the Internet before the retail launch of Windows XP.

In the image, the key is written on a CD-R containing the leaked operating system and held in front of a digital Microsoft sign counting down the days until the release of Windows XP.