Today’s small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face some oversized challenges to staying agile and competitive. They need to modernize their infrastructures so they can react to changing markets, meet regulatory compliance requirements, safeguard against cyber threats, and improve operational efficiency. And they need to accomplish all these goals with extremely tight budgets and limited IT staff.
One cost-effective modernization approach involves standardizing an organization’s server environment with preinstalled Windows Server® 2025 OEM licensing. The latest release of Windows Server comes with automated security capabilities, such as hotpatching, which help boost security without requiring special expertise or manual intervention.
OEM licensing costs less per server, streamlines procurement processes, reduces manual intervention, and accelerates server deployment compared to traditional licensing. The multiple cost, time, and labor savings add up to significant reductions in capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx).
To help illustrate these benefits for SMBs, Prowess Consulting conducted a study sponsored by Dell Technologies to investigate Windows Server 2025 OEM licensing preinstalled on Dell™ PowerEdge™ R770 servers. We also wanted to explore the value of OEM licensing, so we compared two types of server deployments: a preinstalled OEM license and a manually installed comparable volume license.
Our test results revealed that the preinstalled Windows Server 2025 OEM license delivered superior ease of installation, time to deployment, and total cost of ownership (TCO). A preinstalled Windows Server 2025 OEM license requires up to 71 fewer process steps for server deployment than a manual installation of Windows Server 2025 (that is, volume licensing). This streamlining means you can deploy servers faster, reducing deployment time by up to 62% compared to manual installation. Windows Server 2025 OEM licensing also costs up to 40% less than comparable Windows Server volume licensing. In addition, the OEM licensing we examined includes a technical support package that offers significant time- and labor-savings benefits for organizations with limited IT expertise and resources.
