Outage on Microsoft volume licensing site stalls sales

Microsoft partners that sell volume licensing products have not had access to the keys required to activate their products for some weeks, as the website where Microsoft stores the keys has been inaccessible since December 6.

Microsoft's global ‘eOpen' website or Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) - the site customers and their IT providers use to access activation keys - has been undergoing maintenance since that date.

According to Melbourne-based reseller CI Information Technology, the site has effectively prevented partners and customers from retrieving the necessary keys to activate their software.

Henry Craven, owner and Microsoft MVP four years running said the site has "been up and down".

"Basically, it's not possible to get a key out of that system at the moment," he told CRN.

Craven said his business is not directly impacted but claimed that he's in touch with global partners and they are all "screaming about it."

"It's halting the expansion - the installation of new machines, upgrade of existing machines - they can't get keys for installation of new keys.

"[And] it is pushing project deadlines, projects can't get completed before the holidays - pushing people to have to work throughout the holidays," he said.

Craven said Microsoft was slow in communicating the issue with partners, which has fuelled the frustrations.

"[Microsoft] was slack about contacting the partners about this and telling them what was happening. They finally let us know some telephone numbers to call - we did but people didn't know what was going on," he said.

The phone numbers were available on the forum Microsoft uses to communicate with partners, Microsoft Australia Network Portal, on December 15th, more than a week after the site went down.

The blog said:

The centre is undergoing maintenance as part of a series of enhancements to improve the licensing management experience for partners and customers.

Our goal is for the site to be available on Wednesday, December 16, 2009. Microsoft is upgrading the online experience based on partner and customer feedback, which will create a single portal to manage all Volume Licensing agreements and IDs, download product keys, and access Software Assurance benefits.

However, on December 17th, a day after the December 16 deadline, Microsoft posted another blog claiming the site was still undergoing maintenance and will now be available on December 18.

The blog said:

Partners and customers may encounter longer than normal response times due to high volume based on the site maintenance. We appreciate their patience as we service Partner or customer inquiries.

"We're in a bind. The last we heard - which was around three days ago - we're now well past that," said Craven.

Craven said that a roll back option - even if it was paper based - would have been helpful. For the vendor not to have offered it is "pretty unconsciousable", he said.

A Microsoft spokesperson told CRN that Microsoft experienced an unexpected outage and the vendor is working around the clock to bring VLSC back to normal operating parameters.

Microsoft said the goal is to have the site available on December 19 Australian time.

"We have continued to experience issues with the availability of the VLSC since. Microsoft acknowledges that this has had an impact on our customers and partners and we apologise for any inconvenience caused."

"We will also continue to do whatever we can to minimise the impact on our partners. To obtain product keys, partners should contact the Product Activation Call Centre on (02) 9870 2131 or 1800 642 008,"

"Microsoft is also offering to ship media at no cost to our customers. Customers in need of this service should contact the Volume Licensing Call Centre on 1800 002 691," the spokesperson said.

Ryan Spillane from Sydney-based Correct Solutions said he is reverted to using the telephone.

"We have reverted to an older method of calling 1800 642 008 option 4 then option 2. Give them the LAN and Auth number, takes around 5 minutes from picking up the phone to getting the keys in an email."