Volume licensing

This article may lack focus or may be about more than one topic. In particular, it appears that the vast majority of this article is about volume licensing as it pertains to Microsoft products, and specifically Microsoft Windows. Volume licensing as a general concept may still meet WP:NOTABILITY guidelines. Please help improve this article, possibly by splitting the article and/or by introducing a disambiguation page, or discuss this issue on the talk page. (June 2023)

In software licensing, volume licensing is the practice of using one license to authorize software on a large number of computers and/or for a large number of users. Customers of such licensing schemes are typically business, governmental or educational institutions, with prices for volume licensing varying depending on the type, quantity and applicable subscription-term. For example, Microsoft software available through volume-licensing programs includes Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.^[1][2]

Traditionally, a volume licensing key (VLK), which could be supplied to all instances of the licensed computer program, was involved in volume licensing. With the popularity of the software as a service practices, volume licensing customers only supply their software with credentials belonging to an online user account instead, which is used for other aspects of services and provisioning.