How do schools afford Microsoft 365 a3?

[Tom_P]

Hi guys!

 

I use to work as an IT contractor, and over the years worked at many schools. Majority of them having A3 or A5 microsoft licencing..

 

Now I work at a trust on a perminant basis. They currently have A1 and office 2021 licences but they want the full features available in M365 A3.. but at £4.67 per staff member per month they cannot afford it.

 

I assumed it wasn't that costly as so many schools I worked at had it.

 

Am i just naive - is it not that much, and the school will have to budget for it? Or am I missing a trick?

 

Would be really interested to know what your guys views on this are.

 

Tom.

[ITGuyNW]

I guess it depends how much value you get out of it. As it includes Office, Intune, P1 licencing, you can justify the costs.

[Tom_P]

I guess it depends how much value you get out of it. As it includes Office, Intune, P1 licencing, you can justify the costs.

 

Yeah, true. I guess they just see it as an Office subscription. Maybe I can look to make use of InTune to claw back some budget on the current MDM.

[dmj]

It turns out that they pay their techs next to nothing so the money magically appears.

[ThatBoringBloke]

Not something I'm really clued up on, so i could be way off here, but do they not just need to licence the users that need it, with each Staff licence also allowing 40 'Student licences'? So how would MS distinguish the diference in the user?

 

You might have 10 staff that actually need the extra 'Staff bit of the licence' (what ever that is) whilst the rest could just use the 'Student' licence?

 

Or am I way off?

[5tu]

Hi guys!

 

I use to work as an IT contractor, and over the years worked at many schools. Majority of them having A3 or A5 microsoft licencing..

 

Now I work at a trust on a perminant basis. They currently have A1 and office 2021 licences but they want the full features available in M365 A3.. but at £4.67 per staff member per month they cannot afford it.

 

I assumed it wasn't that costly as so many schools I worked at had it.

 

Am i just naive - is it not that much, and the school will have to budget for it? Or am I missing a trick?

 

Would be really interested to know what your guys views on this are.

 

Tom.

 

The same way they afford every other critical required service in school - they budget for it. The way the threat landscape is changing I think A3 is now a basic requirement due it including AD Premium P1 which is required for Conditional Access.

[kennysarmy]

We recently had to purchase 250 A3 licences at over £2500 per annum!

But what can you do?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

The same way they afford every other critical required service in school - they budget for it. The way the threat landscape is changing I think A3 is now a basic requirement due it including AD Premium P1 which is required for Conditional Access.

 

We had staff using MFA on A1, we needed A3 for retention polices.

[5tu]

We recently had to purchase 250 A3 licences at over £2500 per annum!

But what can you do?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

We had staff using MFA on A1, we needed A3 for retention polices.

 

I'd argue basic MFA (while good) isn't enough these days. Conditional Access policies covering User Risk, Sign-in Risk, Location and Device Compliance really help to reduce the risk of breach and data loss.

Edited January 26, 2024 by gybe78

[Tom_P]

We recently had to purchase 250 A3 licences at over £2500 per annum!

But what can you do?.

 

Thats much cheaper than what ive been quoted!

 

£56 per user per year is what I've been quoted. Who supplied your licences?

[2ilent8cho]

We paid £45.12 per staff member in November for M365 Education A3. All student A3's included at no cost. Thats with an EES Agreement.

[Boredguy]

It depends on which supplier you go through, which scheme your on etc.

Talking to companies like VeryPC and Pugh can point you in the correct direction as costs for Education is normally per year and not per month like it shows on the MS 365 Site.

[mavhc]

We recently had to purchase 250 A3 licences at over £2500 per annum!

But what can you do?

 

Don't use Microsoft products

[kennysarmy]

Thats much cheaper than what ive been quoted!

 

£56 per user per year is what I've been quoted. Who supplied your licences?

 

TrustMarque

[Aprice]

Effectively for us it works as a slight uplift, when factoring in the A3 covers practically everything we've needed the existing licences for. And not replacing the EOL servers.

 

Now that the full fat Office licences for staff home devices have also been pulled it's also added to the incentive of A3, conditional access is also a big factor.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yeah, true. I guess they just see it as an Office subscription. Maybe I can look to make use of InTune to claw back some budget on the current MDM.

 

Given that most secondary schools turn over 2 to 4 million quid per year, every secondary school can afford £5000 odd a year if they decided they need it.

 

I guarantee you there's much more money already being spent per year on much worse "designed by a guy in a shed" software.

[synaesthesia]

Given that most secondary schools turn over 2 to 4 million quid per year, every secondary school can afford £5000 odd a year if they decided they need it.

 

I guarantee you there's much more money already being spent per year on much worse "designed by a guy in a shed" software.

 

Awww come on, SIMS is 3 guys in a summer house...

[Tom_P]

Given that most secondary schools turn over 2 to 4 million quid per year, every secondary school can afford £5000 odd a year if they decided they need it.

I guarantee you there's much more money already being spent per year on much worse "designed by a guy in a shed" software.

 

I completely agree with you with other schools I've worked in. But that isnt the case where i am currently. I work at a SEN school so we have a lot more staff so more licences, and a lot of the budget is spent on specialist equipment.

 

I also wish it was £5000 a year. For us its coming in at just under £20000 for all staff. If i just include critical staff then ive got it down to £14000. Still a lot of money to spend. I'll just have to approach it at a different angle - 'its not just MSOffice'.

[Tom_P]

It depends on which supplier you go through, which scheme your on etc.

Talking to companies like VeryPC and Pugh can point you in the correct direction as costs for Education is normally per year and not per month like it shows on the MS 365 Site.

Thank you. The supplier we've been using has been very good on price for other services, but i will give these a shout.

[PotNoodleTech]

I completely agree with you with other schools I've worked in. But that isnt the case where i am currently. I work at a SEN school so we have a lot more staff so more licences, and a lot of the budget is spent on specialist equipment.

 

I also wish it was £5000 a year. For us its coming in at just under £20000 for all staff. If i just include critical staff then ive got it down to £14000. Still a lot of money to spend. I'll just have to approach it at a different angle - 'its not just MSOffice'.

 

Wow do you have 400 staff then?

[Michael]

Free alternatives:

[psydii]

As a lifetime spent with team Microsoft, if I found myself somewhere that would not make the strategic investment to properly run and manage a Microsoft based IT service, I’d move them to Google, there really is no alternative, other than something quite bespoke that would cost them more to (re) staff than it would to have just paid the Microsoft tax in the first place!

 

(I’m lucky, we have A5)

 

But as others have said, find a licensing partner who can help you navigate best value, (but have the Google migration as the plan b proposal).

[Mr.Ben]

Our bill is over £80k per annum, which licences 250 A5's, 700 A3's with A5 security and 400 additional Intune and P1 licences.

 

Wherever the resistance is from it is irresponsible and ignorant. You have three options really, report to the board of directors of the Trust (as it is their risk, not yours), move to Google (same costs though for their secure version) or find a new job!

[XiJ]

Office,Windows 11, Intune, defender, conditional access and security products plus more for ~60 a year. I think that’s pretty good value.

 

How much is a mdm + windows + office + Av ?

[Steve21]

Am i just naive - is it not that much, and the school will have to budget for it? Or am I missing a trick?

 

Would be really interested to know what your guys views on this are.

 

Tom.

 

It's not an additional cost really. Doing M365 A3 is just a replacement for the old OVS licensing for Office packs/CALs etc unless ofc the school isn't paying for licenses! - Obviously I'm not saying its the same pricing, depending on your staff/computer layout etc, but it's not something brand new that a school shouldn't have money assigned for. For example the last 3 schools I've worked at all saved money going to A3 over individual licensing via OVS+CSP

 

Steve

Edited January 27, 2024 by Steve21

[jmak]

The OP is in a difficult position. When you want to buy something that wasn't in last year's budget, something else is going to have to get cancelled - £20k is almost enough to employ a full time IT tech,or heading on two term time only classroom TAs. (Obviously it's not, but it is a big lump of money.)

 

TLDR: it's a lot of money, but actually good value.

 

I got lucky when I introduced an OVS subscription. We had a set of teacher laptops with Office 2003 going out of support and a new set of 30 student laptops and no money to buy the perpetual licences the school had always bought. I demo'd libre office to SLT which they approved and I deployed it to all clients so that everyone had the same. The teachers hated it and there was uproar (although the students managed fine). I was asked to think again and proposed OVS. As they'd asked me, rather than the other way round, the money was found.

 

It turned out to have lots of benefits - I could update and upgrade the windows editions to match across all PCs and go to Enterprise edition which allowed Bitlocker. All the PCs ran the same version of Office. I bought additional server licences so that I could virtualize. There are lots more advantages now as mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

The other point I'd make is that at £5/month, it's less than half an hour of time costs for someone on minimum wage. If you have a Microsoft background, the amount of time you'd spend learning about and supporting another system also has a cost.