Starting on Wednesday, US enterprises can sign up for Microsoft's new Select Plus licensing program, a plan that one analyst said seems to be designed more to help the software giant than its customers.

Select Plus is similar to Microsoft's Select volume licensing program in that it lets companies combine the purchasing power of different departments to qualify for bigger volume-based discounts.

A spokesperson for Microsoft Australia confirmed the program will be available to Australian enterprises from October 3.

Select Plus has a couple of differences but not much that will be particularly attractive to most companies, according to Paul DeGroot, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft.

For example, unlike Select, Select Plus doesn't require customers to try to estimate their annual purchases in advance in order to calculate the volume discount they will receive. That could potentially ensure more revenue for Microsoft but likely won't save enterprises much money, DeGroot said. That's because with Select, if enterprises overestimate what they'll buy, they don't have to pay Microsoft back at the end of the year for the difference between the discount they got and the lower discount they actually qualified for.

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