Microsoft to move out of the education market?

[Dave_O]

Now stop me if I'm wrong but I think that MS want to move out of the education arena. Please read the details below and let me know what you think.

 

Microsoft memorandum of understanding - GOV.UK

[sparkeh]

Not moving out of education but removing the discounts we enjoy. Under the MoU things are destined to get a lot more expensive.

 

Though its an odd move. As I see it, the healthy discounts we get keeps schools using MS products and exposing pupils (future customers) to their wares. Paying a lot more could push schools to moving away from MS which would be bad for them.

[Quackers]

It says ESS discounts removed in 2018, so does that mean ESS is going to get very expensive soon?

[sparkeh]

It says ESS discounts removed in 2018, so does that mean ESS is going to get very expensive soon?

Looks like it, unless something changes before then.

[localzuk]

Realistically, if you renew for a 3 year EES sub in 2018, you will enjoy the discounts until 2021.

[Steve21]

I hope it wont make much of a difference. ("hope")

 

Office via EES will turn into a O365 subscription.

And MS already said about keeping Windows going on updates/small changes.

 

Just seems like they're moving into a subscription rather than anything else. So it'll be a flat thing across everyone whether school or what not

 

Steve

[Quackers]

Looks like it, unless something changes before then.

 

 

Hmmm, thats not good then as the 6 Primaries we support already pull their face at the £1300ish they spend a year on EES at the moment. Hopefully by 2018 they will all have more iPads and can make do with Pages, Numbers and Keynote making less of a need for EES.

[Sagima]

Is this everything? eg Windows itself or just things like exchange, sharepoint etc which have free microsoft cloud alternatives?

 

It sounds like the former to me but I'm hoping Ive misread it.

[Steve21]

Seems like everything, but again "Microsoft have also made it clear that their future investment in products for schools will be linked to cloud services "

 

If Windows moves to a free/cheap upgrade license like OSx, really the only thing you'll be paying for is O365

 

Steve

[localzuk]

Is this everything? eg Windows itself or just things like exchange, sharepoint etc which have free microsoft cloud alternatives?

 

It sounds like the former to me but I'm hoping Ive misread it.

 

Its everything, yes. The MoU covers all the products available under the various licensing schemes they offer us.

 

So, what they want us to do is stop running our own servers, and use their Azure stuff. To stop using local office, and use Office 365 etc...

 

Great. At the moment, couldn't happen - the price to run everything we use at the moment in a cloudy way would far outstrip our current IT spend. So, as that is the case, we might as well look at a complete redo of our IT setup. Look at moving away from Windows entirely instead...

[CyberNerd]

It wouldn't be the first time MS have massively screwed schools over. I can think of a couple of occasions - once our Office license cost went up from £9k to over £50k just because they changed how it would be licensed (in terminal services) Another they started to charge for RDP licenses when previously they were free, costing us another £4k.

We since stopped using office. Soon we'll stop using windows.

 

edit: sorry I got distracted by a support call.

When we first evaluated Google Docs vs O365 the price for all students having access was something like £70k per year. They changed that very early on, but the thought of their price fluctuations really put us off (and the fact that O365 was crap).

Edited January 29, 2016 by CyberNerd

[Steve21]

The problem is if MS does it what stops Google "insert other" suddenly charging for theirs too?

 

Ignoring things like Linux for it's lack of management etc, you're pretty much stuck between MS/Google for a decent Education basis currently :s

 

Steve

[Steve21]

Just reading a bit more on their blog:

 

Higher and Further Education customers are unfortunately not permitted to utilise the ‘special terms’ of the Education Cloud Transition Agreement, however we have agreed with the DfE that these customers will have access to the pricing until 30th June 2016.

 

Will that affect 6th form etc? Or does the "school" still count as lower education.

 

Steve

[CyberNerd]

Ignoring things like Linux for it's lack of management etc,

 

Plenty of management tools, thats why mega companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook use them - Linux just lacks a management tool GUI's.

[maark]

Chromeboxes and chromebooks could start looking a lot more appealing - £19 per licence per device to control via console but no updates, backup, software to install, antivirus, office licence, windows licence or servers to run. Unless google decide to start charging for GAFE.

[Steve21]

Plenty of management tools, thats why mega companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook use them - Linux just lacks a management tool GUI's.

 

More meant in regards to things like take Libre Office (or whatever the latest version is), who's going to patch it for XYZ programs that need it. Starts fragmenting to who's driving the whole system.

 

At least with a MS/Google/Apple way you know (or should know) software on their own stuff should all be maintained

 

Steve

[localzuk]

Plenty of management tools, thats why mega companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook use them - Linux just lacks a management tool GUI's.

 

I'd disagree with that. There are quite a few GUI management tools around. The issue is that they are generally pretty darn expensive. Or complicated to set up.

[CyberNerd]

More meant in regards to things like take Libre Office (or whatever the latest version is), who's going to patch it for XYZ programs that need it. Starts fragmenting to who's driving the whole system.

 

At least with a MS/Google/Apple way you know (or should know) software on their own stuff should all be maintained

 

Steve

 

 

Yes I agree with that. You can rely on a company to maintain a distro these days and they will help in this respect. That's pretty much all Google do with Chromebooks, there is also RedHat, Canonical. You don't need to build and manage it all yourself.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I'd disagree with that. There are quite a few GUI management tools around. The issue is that they are generally pretty darn expensive. Or complicated to set up.

 

Spacewalk is pretty good, and Free (ish).

[Sagima]

Well hopefully azure will get a nice near-enough-free-for-education tariff and I can move my server room into the cloud completely. I wonder if they'll let us swap the basic win10 licence that come switch pcs to the educational one for ltsb reasons for free.

Either that or gooldle chrome os/linux is going to become very popular all of a sudden

[CyberNerd]

Well hopefully azure will get a nice near-enough-free-for-education tariff and I can move my server room into the cloud completely.

 

I've been hoping for the same for quite some time, things have got better and its competitive but still just cheaper to run locally hosted. This will change in time.

 

Either that or gooldle chrome os/linux is going to become very popular all of a sudden

It's only the UK where this hasn't really taken off. Lots of other contries do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters

And Google reckon their chromebook (linux) outsells all other devices combined in US Schools.

[localzuk]

Spacewalk is pretty good, and Free (ish).

 

Only for some aspects of network management. User management? DHCP? DNS? The list goes on.

 

The tools in Windows are all similar, have a similar look and feel and take very little time to figure out. On Linux, much of what you want to do still ends up as config file editing.

[truebluesteve]

Plenty of time for things to change again I suppose and I'm not quite ready to put all my eggs in one cloud based basket just yet!

[Steve21]

Plenty of time for things to change again I suppose and I'm not quite ready to put all my eggs in one cloud based basket just yet!

 

Only thing I'd be concerned about is for example we're currently looking at replacing our BackUp/DR infrastructure and wondering whether this will be a waste of money if in lets say 2-3 years we basically have nothing to backup locally

 

Another example, our switches need sorting out and it's a waste upgrading to 1Gig edge now if in 2-3 years we are running full BYOD/wireless etc

 

Steve

[CyberNerd]

Only for some aspects of network management. User management? DHCP? DNS? The list goes on.

 

The tools in Windows are all similar, have a similar look and feel and take very little time to figure out. On Linux, much of what you want to do still ends up as config file editing.

 

Indeed, and I've never really had a problem editing config files. It's the simplest way to deploy the same settings to all machines - it's still recommended by Cisco, HP, IBM for managing hardware. I think this was my initial point that the tools are all there, but lack gui.

[mthomas08]

I hope it's not too hefty, luckily enough everyone here understands the benefit of Office/Windows.

 

The last time the School attempted to switch to "Open Source" they realised it was a total new ball game to setup, Support and of course the Schools needs. It was a lot of time that became wasted and could have been gone towards making IT work better...

 

Still, I will continue to stick with M$ unless it was a feasible option. We've already tried Google Apps and Open Office, at the time of trying these were not brilliant alternatives.