Microsoft deal sweetens public sector pricing

[FN-GM]

Microsoft deal sweetens public sector pricing - Yahoo! News UK

[Soulfish]

Just sat in on one of the Buying Solutions/Microsoft presentations and seems that (as I expected) the schools/campus agreements and academic select agreements are being left alone as they have even better pricing then the new PSA09 deal.

 

The PSA09 deal did have an interesting option called server+, where for a little extra on top of each CAL you buy, it also licenses you for running the server that the CAL needs.

 

From the Q&A session it appears that providing you keep your licensing up to date with the server+ option this would let you run as many copies of the server OS as you need (essentially unlimited). I think the server+ option was only available as a SA or subscription benefit.

Unfortunately it appears that there's no current plans to offer it as part of any of the academic agreements

[CyberNerd]

According to the Buying Solutions statement, the Microsoft deal "could save the tax payer £75m over the next five years"

 

Mark Taylor, the former chairman of the Open Source Consortium, told ZDNet UK on Thursday that the figure of £75m was only a "notional saving" because "the values that Microsoft attribute to their software [are] obvious nonsense".

 

"No-one has been able to [find out] what is actually being spent by the government on software licences," Taylor, who also heads up the open-source services company Sirius, added. "It's nonsense giving a notional saving without revealing what the actual cost is."

 

Taylor also criticised the government's open-source policy document, saying: "It's not an action plan because an action plan has specific actions, a deadline and someone responsible for achieving them." He said that "even a mild move to free software in the UK public sector would save £600m a year".

 

Microsoft to offer discounts to public sector - ZDNet.co.uk