MS Schools Agreement - Good news for Schools

[SteveJ]

Thought some people might be interested to hear that we've heard from Microsoft that they are planning to offer the option for schools to license their MS software annually using the FTE method (cost calculated based on staff count) used by their Campus (University) customers.

 

This will be available from March so they are allowing any schools agreements expiring from 1st November onwards to get a six month extension for their current agreement so that they can join the new scheme in March.

 

The cost per license will be higher (likely (but not guarenteed) to be 20-30%) but as most schools have more machines than staff it should make the Schools agreement better value for most schools.

 

The option of licensing by machine count will continue to be available.

Edited October 6, 2010 by SteveJ

[teejay]

Nice one, should save quite a bit!

[pritchardavid]

thats intresting!

 

That would saves loads for us!

 

Shame were about to expire soon, we could get the extension

 

but would that include be able to add more licences for that 6 months?, because we need to get more at the moment.

 

 

plus we want to swap out standard cals to enterprise

 

 

 

Where did you find this infomation out mate?

[SteveJ]

I work for a reseller, my boss was on a conference call this morning so we've got nothing in writing yet but I thought it might be useful for people to know who have a renewal coming up.

 

I think the extension will just be a 6 month renewal rather than a full year renewal. Even if it's not I'm sure there will be a way around it (e.g. the Core CAL suite to Enterprise CAL suite step up SKU).

My understanding is this extension is available to customers who's renewal date is 31/10/10 or later.

[Soulfish]

Ohhh now that sounds perfect . Been trying to think of ways to convince MS to let us license using a MS Campus agreement rather than a Schools agreement, but if they're going to let us use FTE from March then I won't bother

[localzuk]

Ooh, this'll be interesting! I'd love to have some example numbers - to see if it changes what we pay at the moment, meaning that we could afford not to shift everything to Ubuntu...

[SteveJ]

There won't be any pricing available until Feb, but if they follow Campus pricing expect Desktop to be somewhere around the £35* mark.

To give a rough idea just add 20-30%* to your current individual license costs and multiply by your FTE count.

 

 

*Obviously it could be higher or lower than this depending on how MS price it

[markberry]

I've just had some quotes in for this. It's about a third of the price of the School's Agreement. Are we able to just start using the new EES method of licensing rather than the previous method? Do we have to buy-out of the School's Agreement first or just switch to EES?

[Zenden]

you can switch when your schools agreement renewal date is due.

[SteveJ]

I've just had some quotes in for this. It's about a third of the price of the School's Agreement. Are we able to just start using the new EES method of licensing rather than the previous method? Do we have to buy-out of the School's Agreement first or just switch to EES?

 

You can just switch at renewal, there's no additional charge to do it.

[teejay]

Well, you could switch at any time, but you are unlikely to get a rebate on the outstanding time on the schools agreement.

[garethEds]

We currently pay around £8K for our School Agreement. A quick preview quote for the new way came in at £2500 - amazing saving.

 

Gareth

[Gibbo]

Down to £4000 from £7000, not quite the saving I was hoping for.

[jcs808]

Schools agreement would have cost us £18000, EES only £4500

[Jawloms]

We've gone from £15K to £4.5K

[KK20]

Interestingly enough, our Bursar thought that the 200hours for FTE was spot on and quite generous since our teachers are contracted on a 37 week year not 52 - although support staff are contracted on a 52 week year hence a little more calculation was necessary. The threshold for "full time staff" is lower than 200 hours with respect to inland revenue.

 

Our EES halved our costs ,pretty much all staff were included as we have very few part time staff but we have a very high level of PCs - it worked out great for us!

[plexer]

Your teachers work 1.08 hours a day?

 

Ben

[Dos_Box]

Your teachers work 1.08 hours a day?

 

Ben

 

Thats what having a powerful union gets you

[KK20]

Your teachers work 1.08 hours a day?

 

Ben

Ho hum.

 

The part times ones we do have work a few hours a week yes - especially the peri music teachers who are in maybe one day a week (5 hours a week under this scheme's reckoning). There is also a specialist who comes in to tutor a student off timetable, they work less than 5 hours a week too.