Microsoft to move out of the education market?

[TechMonkey]

Any ideas what this Transition Agreement has in mind for back-end systems? We can guess the future of Office \ Windows to some extent but what are MS expecting we're going to do with our servers in the short-medium term?

 

To the Cloud and BEYOND!!!!!

[Gibson335]

Microsoft putting prices up by 14-19% on OVS/EES on July 1st 2016

And again on July 1st 2017

And again on July 1st 2018

 

So best thing to do is to sign a 3-year agreement before 1st July 2016 which takes you to mid-2019 with the best possible price.

 

By 2018 Microsoft will be running their Cloud Transition Agreement which is what their ambitions for Education are to get every school onto.

 

If you wait until 2018 you will end up paying a lot more in the meantime. The most cost effective solution is to sign a 3-year agreement before July, and then plan ahead for 2019 changes - by which time everything should be more understood!

 

If anybody needs any further info, I'm happy to help.

 

Craig

 

Unfortunately, our existing agreement expires at the end of July 2018 - 1 month too late to take advantage of a new 3 year agreement.

 

By the way - the pricing structure you quote...is that speculation or confirmed, please? So, am I reading that right and it could be as much as 57% more expensive from July 2018?

[sparkeh]

Any ideas what this Transition Agreement has in mind for back-end systems? We can guess the future of Office \ Windows to some extent but what are MS expecting we're going to do with our servers in the short-medium term?

Hopefully, it will look at little like how they are trying to move corporate customers to the cloud. Some 365 bundles give you rights to use on premises services without having to buy cals (eg for exchange, lync, sharepoint), meaning that businesses can subscribe 365 and still use their onsite services until they are ready to move.

 

What would be great if they came up with a hybrid agreement ie pay us for 365 and you can still use a number of on site servers etc.

[sparkeh]

Also, worth noting that no one actually knows what the current discount is, or what the actual price of an academic licence is. Is it corporate pricing? Is it public sector pricing?

 

So when MS say the discount decreases by a certain amount, its meaningless really.

[Mr_Jiminy]

Confirmed at this end too... The official word from Microsoft "to bring in line with European pricing".

 

Microsoft putting prices up by 14-19% on OVS/EES on July 1st 2016

And again on July 1st 2017

And again on July 1st 2018

 

So best thing to do is to sign a 3-year agreement before 1st July 2016 which takes you to mid-2019 with the best possible price.

 

By 2018 Microsoft will be running their Cloud Transition Agreement which is what their ambitions for Education are to get every school onto.

 

If you wait until 2018 you will end up paying a lot more in the meantime. The most cost effective solution is to sign a 3-year agreement before July, and then plan ahead for 2019 changes - by which time everything should be more understood!

 

If anybody needs any further info, I'm happy to help.

 

Craig

Edited February 2, 2016 by Mr_Jiminy

[Andrew_C]

standards will of course have improved,

Ummm... Really? I've not used the latest Office offerings, but M$ following "standards" rather than forcing users to use M$ exclusively is a good thing. Right?

[Michael]

Hmm well bearing in mind 1 Euro is worth 75p, it just looks like the UK is being ripped off again. It should be the other way around and we get it cheaper.

[Michael]

Ummm... Really? I've not used the latest Office offerings, but M$ following "standards" rather than forcing users to use M$ exclusively is a good thing. Right?

 

I think we're crossing wires here when I say standards - Standards in that I think Office 2016 is overall a better/more polished product than say Office 2010, but if you're referring to open standards/file formats, then no I agree Microsoft still have a long way to go.

[karldenton]

It really does make you think about future planning.

 

I was going to do a £25,000 SAN with 2 vmware hosts, backup veeam, sophos utm and 6 RED's across all our sites this summer, but like everyone says, might be worth moving to Azure / OneDrive if it will be cheaper.

[Gibson335]

Yet again I'm getting a different story from others - the post with percentage increases suggests it will go up each of the next 3 years, at 14-19% each time...is that confirmed by anyone, or am I reading that wrong and it's just a single 14-19% increase please?

[localzuk]

It really does make you think about future planning.

 

I was going to do a £25,000 SAN with 2 vmware hosts, backup veeam, sophos utm and 6 RED's across all our sites this summer, but like everyone says, might be worth moving to Azure / OneDrive if it will be cheaper.

 

Indeed. I'm looking at merging the IT of 7 schools, so don't really want to spend £10s of thousands on in-house servers only for our licensing costs to shoot up, whereby we make the servers redundant by not using on-site services any more!

[gshaw]

It really does make you think about future planning.

 

I was going to do a £25,000 SAN with 2 vmware hosts, backup veeam, sophos utm and 6 RED's across all our sites this summer, but like everyone says, might be worth moving to Azure / OneDrive if it will be cheaper.

 

Or reconsider all MS stuff entirely if there's no guarantee of long term pricing... that Chromebook / GAfE trial I'm running becomes even more relevant now.

[dblight]

It's ok MS and others ramming cloud down everyone's throat but we have 4 separate primary schools in the sticks. The ADSL connection is slow and unreliable at best.

[Geoff]

I spotted this blog post today.

 

Another step in licensing transformation: new policy and guidance for Enterprise Agreement customers - Microsoft Volume Licensing Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

Do the seat / device limits apply to education EES?

[ozydave]

It's ok MS and others ramming cloud down everyone's throat but we have 4 separate primary schools in the sticks. The ADSL connection is slow and unreliable at best.

 

I do have a 100mb connection on a 1GB bearer so can up my speed but the connection is not the best. I would need another redundant line to maintain services.

 

But that second line would have to be paid for by us, way way to many pennies.

[Achandler]

I did joke that a 2nd leased line is more then my current MS bill anyway. So even if they made everything ont he cloud for free I would be losing out.

[foofighterjim]

Maybe it is all to pay for this: Microsoft tests underwater data centre - BBC News

 

Would it still be the cloud if it is in the sea

[Vlad_the_Emailer]

Maybe it is all to pay for this: Microsoft tests underwater data centre - BBC News

 

Would it still be the cloud if it is in the sea

 

With all the warnings of disaster that'll come from increases in sea temperature, someone should warn Satya Nadella that designing machines to release large amounts of heat into the sea may make him look like a bond villain.

[localzuk]

I spotted this blog post today.

 

Another step in licensing transformation: new policy and guidance for Enterprise Agreement customers - Microsoft Volume Licensing Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

Do the seat / device limits apply to education EES?

 

I believe the OVS-ES scheme has an upper limit, at which point you move to the EES scheme instead (we just all misuse the EES name).

[jmak]

I'm working on the basis that this statement in the MoU (Key Features, section 3: Planning for Change. Page 4) means what it says:

 

Up until July 1st 2018 schools will be able to renew their Microsoft subscription licensing agreement with discounted pricing locked for up to three years e.g. a school with an OVS-ES agreement which expires in June 2018 can renew their agreement (if they wish) with discounted pricing for a further 3 years.

 

So although very annoying, as others have mentioned, I do have 5 years to plan for this. First reaction (well, seconds after wtf) is I'll make sure that all the devices I buy from now on have OEM OS licences (I've only got around 30 at the minute which don't, we'll use some kind of free or cheap office software which could well be cloud based (I was hoping to move to cloud based anyway) and I'll completely review our server infrastructure. We're a small school, so the file server aspect can go into the cloud quite easily (and synched locally to a non-Windows place if we deem it necessary). I'm planning an IDaaS approach for providing single sign on. At the minute it's synched with AD - I guess that in five years I'll either have trained myself to do account management from a Linux server or I'll be using the IDaaS as the primary source rather than the "slave" as it is in our current infrastructure.

 

The only big bit that I can't see an obvious solution for is the requirement for SIMS users to have MS Office. Seems like something we'll need to push Capita on.

[sparkeh]

The thing that's bothering me at the moment is that I have to order a new suite, do I continue to go with Windows Home licences that we upgrade with our OVS-ES or go for Pro?! Our agreement will run until Summer '19, with no idea what's going to happen not sure what to do.

[TechMonkey]

Yet again I'm getting a different story from others - the post with percentage increases suggests it will go up each of the next 3 years, at 14-19% each time...is that confirmed by anyone, or am I reading that wrong and it's just a single 14-19% increase please?

 

From the original document:

 

1st July 2016 – 30th June 2017 Discounts reduced to approximately half their current level.

1st July 2017 – 30th June 2018 Discounts reduced to about a quarter of their current level.

 

But only for NEW customers. I had missed that bit. Renewing customers get the same discount right up to 2018. I'm guessing someone has worked out the math for those percentages.

[sted]

With all the warnings of disaster that'll come from increases in sea temperature, someone should warn Satya Nadella that designing machines to release large amounts of heat into the sea may make him look like a bond villain.

its an affirmative action hiring policy spongebob now works there

 

I really need to look at azure but I just don't seem to be able to find a simple what is it document anywhere I know it does ad but no gpo but that's about it

[CyberNerd]

I'm working on the basis that this statement in the MoU (Key Features, section 3: Planning for Change. Page 4) means what it says:

 

 

 

So although very annoying, as others have mentioned, I do have 5 years to plan for this. First reaction (well, seconds after wtf) is I'll make sure that all the devices I buy from now on have OEM OS licences (I've only got around 30 at the minute which don't, we'll use some kind of free or cheap office software which could well be cloud based (I was hoping to move to cloud based anyway) and I'll completely review our server infrastructure. We're a small school, so the file server aspect can go into the cloud quite easily (and synched locally to a non-Windows place if we deem it necessary). I'm planning an IDaaS approach for providing single sign on. At the minute it's synched with AD - I guess that in five years I'll either have trained myself to do account management from a Linux server or I'll be using the IDaaS as the primary source rather than the "slave" as it is in our current infrastructure.

 

The only big bit that I can't see an obvious solution for is the requirement for SIMS users to have MS Office. Seems like something we'll need to push Capita on.

 

I met my boss to plan this too.

I don't think you will need to learn account setups from linux, as far as I know SAMBA uses standard windows tools at the front end, once it is set up.

My plan is (in order):

1) File servers - migrate to Samba (actually I did this years back)

2) Print Server (CUPS and Papercut on Linux)

3) Migrate NPS to FreeRadius

4) Migrate SIMS to hosted SIMS (I asked Capita about the MSOffice requirement on hosted SIMS already)

5) Migrate Terminal Services to some sort of Linux RDP and only run non-windows apps like this.

6) DHCP, DNS to Linux

7) Migrate Active Directory to SAMBA 4.

 

I think that covers all the windows server side that we run. Still need to find the requirements of hosted SIMS.

 

Should be fun.

[localzuk]

its an affirmative action hiring policy spongebob now works there

 

I really need to look at azure but I just don't seem to be able to find a simple what is it document anywhere I know it does ad but no gpo but that's about it

 

Azure is many things - its a catch all for Microsoft's cloud offerings.

 

You can use Azure AD, which has domain join now with Windows 10, but it is limited from what I can tell. However, Azure also has virtual machine hosting, so you can slap a normal AD setup on there, and have a VPN in place to connect your local network to it. You can do the same thing with pretty much any and all server functions in fact.

 

The Azure AD would be SaaS (software as a service), whereas the VM setup, with their Virtual Network offering would be PaaS and possible IaaS (platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service).

 

The problem comes down to cost - at the moment, it would be entirely possible to move everything to such a solution, but the cost would be around 10-15x the amount we pay now for our server infrastructure, plus the internet on top.

 

So, realistically, moving to the cloud means a fundamental rethink of how you do business. Simply moving your in-house services into the cloud isn't what's intended.