Microsoft Select agreement not signed by the Department of Education

[Lipjam]

I have been told by one of our resellers at school that the Department of Education has not yet signed the new select agreement for schools so as a result schools will not be able to avail of reduced pricing once the contracts signed by schools under the (now defunct) Becta select agreement expires. Since Becta used to have responsibility for this and now are all but in name scrapped it seems this responsibility has be shifted to the Department of Education. Ours expired last month and we have to now pay full commercial rates for any Microsoft perpetual licences as a result. This doesn't surprise me... another victim of this Government's cutbacks. Looks like there could be another incompetency shambles in the making... Anyone heard anything about this?

[FN-GM]

I think allot less people will be using this anyway, EEES works out allot cheaper.

[Ergo]

Although it may be the case that you cannot access licensing through the previous BECTA select agreement (although I am not aware of this particular avenue for schools to purchase licensing, this does not mean that schools are not entitled to discounted pricing for any licenses from Microsoft. There are several avenues which you can pursue including setting up your own select agreement (possible but may require a minium quantity of licenses), utilising an alternate "shared" agreement such as from NAACE (depends on the reseller), or EES subscription agreements. In many cases now the EES agreements work out as very cost effective but without knowing your particular requirements I would not want to recommend any particular option as being the best for you, but if you would like to have a conversation about the various options I would be happy to PM, email or call you to talk them through.

Regards,

David

[KeithMPhoenix]

I can't dive into detail however you most certainly should not be being told that you have to purchase at commercial rates. Id suggest you wait to see how it plays out.

[zag]

From my experience the BECTA or Local government negotiated contracts were far more expensive than what we could get commercially. We dumped them a long time ago.

Microsoft offer really good rates to schools.

[KeithMPhoenix]

Its to do with the discount - the Select Agreement had a discount applied to it for schools and it was refered to as the Becta discount. It's this that is being refered to. As mentioned - EES/OVS-EES is not affected.

[Lipjam]

The EES schemes are fine as far as they go but it is a leasing scheme and not always appropriate (SQL server?). The whole thinking behind the Becta agreement was that it functioned as a cooperative for individual school who would never be able to satisfy the purchase requirements of a MVL agreement on their own.

[KeithMPhoenix]

Should all be back to normal next week.

[Lipjam]

Thanks KeithMPhoenix. I had an email from Microsoft confirming this:

The current LGA Select Framework expired on 30th September 2012 and will show as ‘expired’ on Explore. A few people have commented that there is no mention of an extension on this agreement.
The Select program was retired last year, therefore no extension or new agreements can be issued. This also applies to the LGA framework. As a result the Select Agreement you see today will remain listed as ‘expired’ and won’t change.

The new Select Plus agreement which will be set up next week, will list the new MOU extension of the 20% discount until 30th November 2012. We do have the signed MOU extension at Microsoft and the LGA framework is expected to be set up at the beginning of next week.

[KeithMPhoenix]

Just to confirm - this is now live.