Do we need an EES agreement?

[sidewinder]

I've got quotes, got it agreed, but spending £3k per year when the school currently pays nothing (since licences have been bought) doesn't exactly sell my idea (the bursar agreed, but reluctantly)

 

We've got just shy of 100 PC's, all with OEM XP (which is a nightmare to manage) and Office 2007, which was bought a couple of years ago and licences topped up since then, as well as a few servers, exhange etc and more planned.

 

Essentially, when I add everything up and compare the cost, it would cost around £7k to do it compared with EES. But then we will have paid over that after 3 years anyway.

 

Obviously though of course we'd have to pay that in x number of years to upgrade again.

 

What would you do?

[KK20]

Almost the same boat as us except we have office 2003. We decided to move to EES in order to licence office 10 (this summers job) and move to windows 7 next year.

 

Dont forget your CALs too (which will be included in EES - except external connector if you need it) and how do you pay for server licences? Would they not be cheaper under EES umbrella? Granted our EES is a similar price to yours but we have close to 300 PCs. It does mean you can recycle the old PCs to "lightweight roles" on the network. Certainly now I use old PCs are glorified print servers (in our Art department where I have set a desktop machine up with 6 inkjet printers)

[Steve21]

I've got quotes, got it agreed, but spending £3k per year when the school currently pays nothing (since licences have been bought) doesn't exactly sell my idea (the bursar agreed, but reluctantly)

 

We've got just shy of 100 PC's, all with OEM

 

I have to ask, how do you get the £3k figure? Especially with the new pricing structure in. Isn't it based on staff numbers now?

 

Steve

[teejay]

If you've got 100 PC's and quite a few staff, you may actually find it cheaper on Schools Agreement rather than EES. Schools Agreement is based on number of PC's rather than number of staff, but the cost per unit is lower and so in some circumstances can work out cheaper.

[IrritableTech]

The quotes we have been getting are for about £36-40 per FTE staff. I assume you are multiplying the quoted unit price by the number of machines, rather than staff?

 

If you have 30 staff for example, the quote should be for £1200/year at most!

[sidewinder]

We have 61 FTE staff, which is probably a lot compared to the number of PC's we have. Hence why the quote is around 3k. Might have to get a schools agreement quote too then.

[Jawloms]

Why buy in to the EES now? Why not just buy in to in a couple of years time when things need upgrading?

[sidewinder]

I want to start upgrading to W7, want to upgrade all the servers, upgrade to Exchange 2010 and we have 20 macs coming in which will need Office.

It is a fair point though...we've bought Select licences before now so potentially we could just buy the extras we need for now...

 

The main problem is the manageability of it, using OEM licences is a pain, and keeping track of CALs and Office licences is difficult too.

[Mr.Ben]

Hi Sidewinder, I am in a similar position - last year we had our first schools agreement for 100 machines. This year we can keep that (+15 more machines) or go to EES licencing, with 80 staff.

 

Both come out to around £3k

 

The price difference for us is around £40 more for EES, but it will allow us to re-use old PC's as Internet only stations (Using Windows Thin PC).

 

Under a schools agreement you could also upgrade OEM Home editions of windows to Professional/Enterprise versions. Buying new machine with Vista Home licenses has made a saving (although it does tie us in a little more).

 

The figures that I worked with when presenting my case to the bursar assumed that we upgraded to W7 and Office 2010 and that over the 3 years of the agreement we would upgrade at least office again. This makes the figures a little easier to bear.

 

Also check your staff list. I have timed my purchase so that it is on the first day of the summer holidays. Staff that have retired are not counted, and new starters are not counted as they have not started yet. I have also made sure that I don't count any Staff on LT Sick or Maternity if their role is being covered by another fixed term member of staff (I have 5 of these which mean 10 people are on the staff list).

Make sure that Dinner Ladies/Lunchtime supervisors/Cleaners have also not found their way onto the list - with the exceptions of the site manager and head dinner lady who use the computers!

 

If I am pushing the rules a little too far here please tell me!

[dgsmith]

We have 61 FTE staff, which is probably a lot compared to the number of PC's we have. Hence why the quote is around 3k. Might have to get a schools agreement quote too then.

 

At 61 FTE, you must be getting quoted about £50 per head? That seems way overpriced - we have 75 FTE (an average sized secondary school) and we're paying just shy of 2.5k. At 61 FTE i'd estimate a 2k annual cost.

 

Heck, even on SA you'd be looking at 100 PCs x ~£25 per desktop = £2500, so £2000 for EES and £2500 for schools agreement, annually. I am basing this on our historic pricing structure (SA) and recent quotes when we got EES in April.

[KK20]

indeed. I would shop around for those EES prices. Unless that 3K includes all your server licences et al and not just your EES

[3s-gtech]

Definitely get more quotes for EES, you shouldn't even be paying £40 per licence, let alone £50 (depending on your situation).

[Millgate]

Hi Sidewinder,

 

I've sent you a PM. Sounds like you've been quoted quite a high price. I'll be happy to do you a comparison.

 

Cheers

 

Luke

[sidewinder]

I was quoted less than £40 a head, the £3k does include the server licences, exchange and SCVMM. So possibly not that bad after all? I was putting it altogether because thats how I've been quoted.

 

Also I did get a quote for enterprise desktop CAL, because it didn't look that much more expensive, but in reality we dont actually need any of those extra CAL's so there is no point really. A standard one should reduce it by a few hundred.

[Millgate]

It still seems a little off. Again, if you'd like me to do you a like for like quote, even just as a comparison, just PM me exactly what you've been quoted (just the part codes - you don't need to put the pricing on) and you could even use it to get your cost down! :-)

 

Thanks

[RabbieBurns]

sorry to hijack this thread, but I've just been made privy to some figures for our licensing prices and I'd like some comments

 

Currently under the schools agreement we are paying over $80,000 AUD

 

With ESS we are quoted as paying just over $15,000AUD

 

180 staff working over 72 hours

60 staff working under 72 hours

 

We have about 1300 Windows desktops/laptops.

 

How does servers enter the equation? I have no idea what our current licensing model includes, but i do know that we run 2008R2 datacenter/enterprise all over the place with some 2003 getting in the way.. We have Ex2007 with all the staff having an account.

 

How does server consideration affect the ESS?

 

[i post this for my info only nothing do do with any organization or school]

[Mr.Ben]

Hi Rabbie,

 

From the quote I have so far this year there is little difference, EES is a little more, but it is not substantial given the saving.

 

These products are on my quote:

 

Server Standard - £24.00

Server Enterprise- £77.18

DPM - £23.52

Multipoint Server - £23.76

MultiPoint Device CAL - £4.54

ILM - £110.00

[Exos]

Microsoft licensing is a minefield, your best bet is to speak to one of the M$ Gold/Education partners and have them look at what is best for you as a school. If you only have a small amount of equipment it may not work out viable for you.

 

Just some basics about EES.

 

1. FTE's are ONLY those staff that work more than 200 hours per year and have access to a workstation, so you can effectively wipe off some of your staff such as cleaners/kitchen staff/caretaker etc.

 

2) If your students are allocated laptops on a 1:1 basis and take them off site rather than issued from a pool, then you need to also get pricing for the Student Option Pack - This is debatable as I'm not sure how this is enforced or managed.

 

3) Pricing for EES enterprise is approximately £38 per FTE.

 

4) EES includes SA.

 

5) Depending on a number of factors such as workstations, students, FTE's, current pricing, whether you want "buyout" perpetual licencing etc all affect how you manage it going forwards.

 

6) For some schools (and most i have been working with) you can save anything from 30% to up to 80%.

 

7) All other licenses (excluding those listed below) and CALs are purchased via the select or other agreement as normal (e.g. Server licenses etc) :

 

Windows 7 Enterprise upgrade (Legacy Upgrades & New) Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 (Legacy Upgrades & New)

 

Microsoft Core CAL Suite** (Includes Windows Server Standard CAL, Exchange Server Standard CAL, SharePoint® Server Standard CAL, and System Center Configuration Manager CAL)

 

Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite** (Includes all Core CAL Suite components plus Active Directory® Rights Management Services CAL, Exchange Server Enterprise CAL, SharePoint Server Enterprise CAL, Office Communications Server Standard CAL, Office Communications Server Enterprise CAL, System Center Client Management Suite*** CAL, Forefront® Protection Suite CAL, and Forefront Unified Access Gateway*** CAL)

 

8) Schools, after 3yrs, have the option to exercise a "buyout" to purchase their licenses outright (however cost can be prohibitive . Indicative pricing as of May 2011 is £41.00 per device)

 

Hope this helps.

Edited May 27, 2011 by Exos

[teejay]

Point 7 isn't quite right, server products etc can all be bought through the EES agreement.

[Exos]

Not according to our Gold Partner.

[teejay]

We've had an EES agreement since March, all our server products were purchased through it. What you have described above is the Desktop bundle, which includes the various CALs depending on which version you buy and is the part which you need to do an FTE count on. That is just one part of the EES agreement, the server products etc you can buy as required and will be on the same subscription agreement.

[Zenden]

i dont think anyone NEEDS it but having moved our school to Software assurance a couple of years ago i can safely say that it makes keeping track of licensing very very easy and the benefits are very useful (getting new software earlier than it can be bought eg we had exchange 2010 as soon as we could!)