Microsoft Licensing ???

[tbd]

Hi Folks,

 

We are currently running XP and Office 2003 site wide and looking to upgrade to Windows 7 Office 2010. Currently we own individual licences for each workstation.

 

We are looking a adopting the EES from Microsoft but want to get a feel for what other schools are using in terms of Microsoft licences and what would be more cost effective.

 

We have 700 computers, 150 full time staff and 1300 students.

 

Any help, guidance, and explanation as to why you take your approach would be appreciated.

 

Many thanks,

Tom

[glennda]

I have just bought out upgrade licenses for Windows 7 and Office 2010 and am running Servers and Core-Cals under the schools agreement - unfortuantly it was setup just before EES come out!

[Cache]

We are a lot smaller then you so about 60 staff and 250 desktops and are currently licenced on XP as OEM licences and Office 2003/2007 as select and I'm trying to get upgraded to Windows 7 and Office 2010 and have proposed to shift to the EES agreement simply because over the course of 5 years (what I based the next release of Windows/Office will be on over the past release dates) the cost for us to pay the annual payment for EES would still not ammount to the initial cost for purchasing Office through Select. Then taking into account that a new version of Windows Server will likely be out in that 5 year period also and the replacement cycle for servers, that then throws in an upgrade cost for CALS too.

 

In the proposal I've done I basically extrapolated the annual cost and a comparison of the select agreement over 5 years, detailing the annual cost (+ the variability for additional staff or additional computers) and then the total after 5/6 years where if you wanted to upgrade to the latest again then highlighting you have to duplicate the initial cost.

 

If it was me with your desktop/staff numbers I would probably push for an EES agreement, the annual cost would probably be less then a quater of the cost of upgrading to Office 2010 and assuming you already have the appropriate CALS in place, but get a couple of quotes for both, price it up and base it off what is likely to happen over the course of 5 years and see which figure balances best.

[garethEds]

We are on our second year school agreement which cost us just under £8K. Next year we move to the new agreement based on staff numbers and have been quoted just under £2.5k. A massive saving.

 

Well turns out the school have now cut my IT budget by £5k so I do not benefit at all.

 

Gareth

[scotth]

I thought EES was only for the number of full paid staff??? so if you have 150 staff how can you license for say 500+ pc's / servers etc???

[Dos_Box]

I thought EES was only for the number of full paid staff??? so if you have 150 staff how can you license for say 500+ pc's / servers etc???

 

Because the pupils are not full time paid staff and are exempt. And, IIRC, you only pay for computer using staff, so catering staff and part time 'assistants' who do not have access to computers do not need to be included (someone please confirm or refute this for me, but I'm pretty sure this was explained to us all at Reading). In short if you license your staff all of the schools systems are covered including the back-end.

[scotth]

Because the pupils are not full time paid staff and are exempt. And, IIRC, you only pay for computer using staff, so catering staff and part time 'assistants' who do not have access to computers do not need to be included .

 

I understand that, but how can we justify only paying for 150 users / licenses when we have over 600 items

[chazzy2501]

I understand that, but how can we justify only paying for 150 users / licenses when we have over 600 items

 

That's whats great about the new ees licensing model you pay for 150 licenses and that covers ANY number of PCs on site. (Not servers)

 

I have 550 PCs and 100 FTEs so my licensing this year was only 3.7k it was over 10k last year!

[teejay]

I understand that, but how can we justify only paying for 150 users / licenses when we have over 600 items

 

If you find it so objectionable, they still do the Schools Agreement which licences per machine

Microsoft CALs have always been available under user or machine licence options, it's just now Microsoft have come up with a way for schools to use this method.

[scotth]

teejay;665698 If you find it so objectionable, they still do the Schools Agreement which licences per machine

 

 

we dont use select we buy licenses as and when needed so at present we have purchased over 600 licenses from our LEA at approx £30 each over a period of time.

 

im looking to the future here, i.e. moving to windows 7, newer server o/s etc etc.

 

next question

 

does EES cover sharepoint suite? server 2008 and VM's etc etc.

 

cheers im already knocking on the bursars door

[Dos_Box]

I understand that, but how can we justify only paying for 150 users / licenses when we have over 600 items

 

You can justify it because it is cheap and you are getting a no strings attached good deal. You must remember that this is a global pricing policy by Microsoft and the schools agreement is available almost everywhere that Microsoft sell licenses to schools (I can't imagine a country where they don't). But what you have to take into account is that the UK is a bit of an anomaly. We have a pupil to computer ratio of 5 to 1 in the UK (in high schools) and this number is often closer to 3 to 1 on schools where they have lots of laptops and mobile devices. The next closest pupil/computer ratio is in the US where it is closer to 15 to 1, globally these figures get higher and higher. So whereas the old policy used to make money by selling per computer, it makes more sense for Microsoft to adopt the new one because on average there are more teaching and computer using staff globally than there are computers in the school. Because in the UK there are more computers than staff it works out better for us, but as I said before, this is simply an anomaly that makes it a very good licensing scheme for UK schools.

 

I hope that made sense.

[scotth]

Yep its all clear now:confused:

 

cheers, ill get in touch with providers (unless anyones knows some good ones)

[teejay]

Yes there are licences for sharepoint, servers etc. You need to have a chat with a MS educational licencing supplier as there are a lot of different options depending on what exactly you want to do. Things like sharepoint can get complicated if needing external connectors etc, also on Windows Server different versions allow you to run multiple VM's on one licence.

[scotth]

Thanks ive just being checking our purchases over the last year and we already have all our Cal's for sharepoint and for the servers, plus windows xp and office 2010 licenses, so maybe at present this is not for us but if we want to go to win 7 then it would be 650 x 37 = approx £24050 so maybe when we decide to change it will be good value.

[garethEds]

Now if only Adobe would see sense and realise pupils are the future and start giving their CS software for a lot less than they do.

 

GJE

[teejay]

Now if only Adobe would see sense and realise pupils are the future and start giving their CS software for a lot less than they do.

 

GJE

 

Aren't Adobe at the Edugeek conference, maybe time to ask some difficult questions.

[teejay]

Thanks ive just being checking our purchases over the last year and we already have all our Cal's for sharepoint and for the servers, plus windows xp and office 2010 licenses, so maybe at present this is not for us but if we want to go to win 7 then it would be 650 x 37 = approx £24050 so maybe when we decide to change it will be good value.

 

You can mix licencing methods, so if you decide to go to Windows 7 you could just buy that on ESS and leave the rest, well you will once they've started splitting the Desktop bundles ;-)