Windows Azure Active Directory for schools

[5tu]

Afternoon All

 

I am currently working on evaluating solutions to allow staff/students to recover/reset their AD passwords via a self service web portal. This would be especially helpful for staff during the school holidays when their AD password expires which of course prevents them from accessing their Office365 email account (federated domain using ADFS).

 

I am keen to evaluate self-service password management in Windows Azure Active Directory Premium as per this video. However the signup process for Azure requires a credit card for verification purposes which our school does not have, and I of course do not want to use a personal card.

 

Does anyone know if Microsoft offer any other route for schools to signup for, and pay if required, Windows Azure services?

 

Many thanks in advance.

Edited January 10, 2014 by gybe78

[TheScarfedOne]

Poke for @EduTech here...

[5tu]

And a poke for @jamesbmarshall...

[EduTech]

Hi,

 

Discussions are taking place at the moment to make it easier for Education Institutes to adopt Windows Azure Services, so watch this space. All new customers that sign up for the trial offer or one of our member offers (e.g., MSDN offer) will now, by default, have a Spending Limit of £0. so this means if you were to place a credit card on to the subscription you wouldn't be charged for anything until you increase the spending limit.

 

When your usage exhausts the monthly amounts included in your offer, we will disable your service for the remainder of that billing month, which includes removing any hosted services that you may have deployed. The data in your storage accounts and databases will be accessible in a read-only manner. At the beginning of the next billing month, your subscription will be re-enabled and you can re-deploy your hosted service(s) and have full access to your storage accounts and databases.

 

You can remove the Spending Limit at any time. However, once removed, the Spending Limit feature cannot be re-enabled. You should remove this Spending Limit on any subscription that has applications that you cannot afford to go offline.

 

In terms of how you can sign up for Windows Azure TODAY then you do have some options:

 

Credit Card [not-suitable for all education institutes]

 

More information can be found here: Purchase Options | Windows Azure

 

Invoice Request

 

You can submit a request to pay by invoice by contacting us either via website (if you have already created a subscription), by email or by phone. Once your request has been approved, you will be provided instructions on how to set up your subscription for the invoice payment method.

 

More Information can be found here: Invoicing - Pricing

 

Enterprise Agreement (EA)

 

More Information can be found here: Enterprise Agreement Details | Windows Azure

 

I hope that helps,

 

James.

[5tu]

Many thanks @EduTech, very helpful.