Microsoft ees licencing

[chrbb]

I've googled this and am still no wiser as to what I need!

 

We have about 360 pupils, approx 40 staff and about 80 computers. We currently buy OEM licences with new computer purchases and office licences at £35 ea.

 

As we still have some computers that are still Xp and our office version is 2003 I'm now wondering if it's time to bite the bullet and pay for a licensing agreement. Can someone point me in the right direction and if poss a ballpark figure on what we'd expect to pay.

[Mr.Ben]

£35-£40 per staff member, per annum, so a max of £1600

 

You'll still have to purchase OEM Licences, but you can get the Windows 7 Home ones and upgrade them to Pro/Enterprise

[tmcd35]

Worth doing your sums on EES vs Academic Select licenses. EES is worth while if you plan to roughly keep pace with new versions of Windows/Office as it's an annual subscription and you loose entitlement to the software if you stop paying the subscription. Over 3 years that £1600 becomes £4800, or £8000 over 5 years. It could be, depending on what you need, traditional Academic licences work out cheaper and are your's to keep forever.

 

(disclaimer - we are an EES subscriber because it doe's work out a better deal for us).

[HC_Netman]

We use Softcat for our Microsoft licensing and they are always happy to give advise and have Microsoft experts that will talk you through your options. There are plenty of other companies as well that I am sure could help.

 

I think the EES agreement will suit you perfectly - you will pay per computer and I think at the moment it is somewhere around £33 per license, includes Office and the OS (the PC's you buy will need to have a basic license installed as this is an upgrade license only) - £33 x 40 staff = £1320 (this is a yearly figure).

 

It is full time staff only and you don't need to include anyone that doesn't use a computer. (Note full time from Microsoft is I think - 200 hours per year).

[IWDave]

You can use this MS EES Calculator to find out what your FTE is (if you didn't know already). You don't need to count anyone that is on your roll that doesn't use a computer, such as cleaners.

MS EES Calculator.xlsx

Edited February 10, 2014 by IWDave

[sonofsanta]

Ours is through Insight, but there's dozens of vendors. Ask your usual suppliers and one of them can probably advise.

 

When I did the sums on purchasing new OEM licences of Office 2010 and Windows 7 for our network versus subscribing to EES, it broke even after about 6 years - which is about when we'd want to upgrade anyway, on an every-other-version cadence. It also saved us about £2k a year on anti-virus though, as Forefront Endpoint Protection is included, and gave us benefits like the Home Use Program for staff (and now Student Advantage for the kids). It allows us to choose when to change software based on requirements rather than any financial situation, which is better - I'm seriously considering Office 2013 for the tighter Office 365 integration, for example, which I couldn't have afforded under perpetual licensing.

 

So it's not all about cost, necessarily - there are benefits in kind as well.

[Neil-Millgate]

@chrbb - not too much to add from the already excellent advice you have received. Let me me know if you want to talk to Kate, our fantastic software specialist and she can point you in the best direction along with some great pricing. Edited February 10, 2014 by Neil-Millgate

[jmak]

We have the same number of FTE as you (I want a full time salary for 6 hours / week!). We had already bought OS licences - all the laptops I bought included a Pro licence and I bought upgrades for the netbooks that the kids use. We just buy Office Pro under EES, which works out at about half of the costs mentioned above. The original decision was made because staff wanted MS Office *now* and we didn't have enough money to buy perpetual licences.

 

I reckon the costs just about break even over a replacement cycle (both for Office and OS), but EES is easier to manage - no worries about licences, no unexpected costs, central deployment for updates. Knowing what I know now, I'd also go for the Enterprise version of the OS rather than the Pro, as there are a few useful features - it would be a very expensive option for me at this point, as I have OS licences for all the clients. When I migrate to Windows 9, I'll go for EES

[Koldov]

We went with EES and thanks to @Neil-Millgate it went smoothly.

 

When I started, the licensing was a bit iffy, 30+ base units with no COA sticker or any apparent proof of any license having been purchased. Server OS, MS Office and SQL were the same, in fact it appears there 'may' have allegedly been an unlicsensed period... I eventually found bits of information relating to what was purchased, but it was a real pain trying to work out what was covered. Unfortunately records were all filed/stored away and related to the previous third-party IT support firm.

 

In the end with a lot of advice from EDUGEEK it was far easier for me to pull it all together with an EES agreement based on F/T staff numbers and not physical pieces of equipment and it included the benefits some have already mentioned.

 

Kol

[chrbb]

Thanks everyone, all a bit clearer now.

[chrbb]

No - one more question. Probably a silly one but do we have to count pupils and pupil computers in? I mean the suite and classroom computers are they covered by the EES agreement?

[localzuk]

The number of pupils or computers doesn't affect EES at all. It is only based on FTE staff over 200 hours who are a computer user. It then covers all your devices. (Its slightly different for server stuff, as you have to license servers still, but there are EES prices for it).

[Neil-Millgate]

@chrbb - you dont have to count them. As long as all FTE are covered then you have usage rights for however many computers you have in school be that 20 or 2000 machines.

[teejay]

Its also worth crunching the numbers on a Schools Agreement annual license as well, which is based on number of computers in the school rather than staff. For some schools with a large number of staff but not so many computers it works out cheaper than EES.

[StevieM]

@chrbb I think you've probably figured out how it works by now, but just to clear up a few misconceptions...

 

You'll still have to purchase OEM Licences, but you can get the Windows 7 Home ones and upgrade them to Pro/Enterprise

No you don't. That's the whole point of EES - you pay your subscription and you get licences for all your computers whether they currently have a licensed version of Windows or not. That is one of the reasons why companies like VeryPC offer computers without an OS.

 

Ignore me - I'm talking rubbish!

...you will pay per computer...

As others have noted, with EES you pay per full-time employee regardless of how many computers you have. For the purpose of EES, full-time employees include anyone who works over 200 hours per year and has access to a computer (so you probably won't need to count cleaners, welfare staff and the like).

 

I'd also go for the Enterprise version of the OS rather than the Pro, as there are a few useful features

Not sure if there is a difference in cost/benefits, but we went for a Windows Pro subscription and Enterprise is included as part of Software Assurance.

 

gave us benefits like the Home Use Program for staff

Any member of staff included in the count can purchase a copy of Office Pro Plus to install on their home computer for £8.95, for as long as the school maintains the subscription (and the member of staff is employed there).

 

(and now Student Advantage for the kids).

I'd heard about this but haven't looked into it yet.

 

It also saved us about £2k a year on anti-virus though, as Forefront Endpoint Protection is included

Now this I didn't know! Did you take out a Server/CAL subscription or is this included with the Windows or Office one?

Edited February 11, 2014 by StevieM

[Boredguy]

@chrbb I think you've probably figured out how it works by now, but just to clear up a few misconceptions...

 

 

No you don't. That's the whole point of EES - you pay your subscription and you get licences for all your computers whether they currently have a licencsed version of Windows or not. That is one of the reasons why companies like VeryPC offer computers without an OS.

 

Strange, my documentation clearly states that we have upgrade rights for EES for Windows operating systems to the latest version, but it does not entitle us to install it on a device that did not previously have a Windows license.

[StevieM]

Strange, my documentation clearly states that we have upgrade rights for EES for Windows operating systems to the latest version, but it does not entitle us to install it on a device that did not previously have a Windows license.

 

Really?... I'd better go and have another look then. :tugs-at-collar-to-release-steam:

[Quackers]

The PC has to have come with a version of Windows licensed to qualify as its only the upgrade version you get licensed for. As per MS Documentation..... only exception is the Mac in which they class Mac OS as a qualifying upgrade OS.

 

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/6/6/F6611596-992F-498A-A8EE-B0B39A6A4D0A/Enrollment_for_Education_Solutions_Program_Guide.pdf

 

"When you license a desktop operating system through this Microsoft Volume Licensing offering, it is important to understand that only the UPGRADE license for Windows is available—FULL operating system licenses are not offered. Prior to licensing a Windows upgrade through your EES desktop platform, you need to have a full underlying license for a qualifying operating system for each PC. (Qualifying operating systems are listed in the Microsoft Volume Licensing Product List.

You can get the necessary full Windows operating system license in the following two ways:

 For newly manufactured PCs, the best way to acquire that license is to have the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) preinstall Windows on the PC.

 If the OEM has not preinstalled Windows on the PC, then you can purchase a full Windows license through retail full-packaged product (FPP)."

[StevieM]

Just read through the documentation again and I stand corrected! Good job you guys are here.

[Boredguy]

Don't worry, had the same debate previously

 

Whenever I buy new motherboards I always order a new copy of Windows 7 Home to go with it.

[sonofsanta]

Now this I didn't know! Did you take out a Server/CAL subscription or is this included with the Windows or Office one?

 

We've taken out the System Center Standard Software Assurance Pack to run SCCM that administers it, which isn't a great deal of cost and I couldn't live without SCCM for all its features now anyway, but if you want to run it without SCCM (which I think is possible) it's licenced in the Core CAL pack anyway, I believe EDIT: Yes it is.

And Student Advantage is well worth looking at - we already had EES, we were already moving to Office 365, so with both those prerequisites dealt with I arranged £400k worth of software with a three minute phone call and five minutes of copying/pasting a licence key from one place to another

Edited February 11, 2014 by sonofsanta

[StevieM]

The question is now is 'How do I buy an extra home-user license for the head's new laptop without him noticing?'

 

Apologies, too, to @Mr.Ben for doubting his expertise.:embarassed:

[StevieM]

We've taken out the System Center Standard Software Assurance Pack to run SCCM that administers it, which isn't a great deal of cost and I couldn't live without SCCM for all its features now anyway, but if you want to run it without SCCM (which I think is possible) it's licenced in the Core CAL pack anyway, I believe EDIT: Yes it is.

 

We purchased server and CALs outright a couple of years ago when we upgraded from Server 2003 to 2008, so we've only subscribed to Windows and Office for now.

 

 

And Student Advantage is well worth looking at - we already had EES, we were already moving to Office 365, so with both those prerequisites dealt with I arranged £400k worth of software with a three minute phone call and five minutes of copying/pasting a licence key from one place to another

 

And was this information ever posted in the 'What cool thing(s) did u do today?', thread?

[Boredguy]

The question is now is 'How do I buy an extra home-user license for the head's new laptop without him noticing?'

 

Apologies, too, to @Mr.Ben for doubting his expertise.:embarassed:

 

Simple. Buy a full copy of Windows 7 Home then slap the licence code onto the chassis.

[sonofsanta]

And was this information ever posted in the 'What cool thing(s) did u do today?', thread?

 

Nah, thought I'd lay off spamming that thread for a while though I did crow about it at Student Council t'other day, and have bored multiple people with tales of how arranging £400k of software for free with a 3 minute phone call means I was generating value at £8m an hour for a brief, shining moment in my career, never to be topped.