A bit of background first….Microsoft has had an UK Schools Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with DfE for over 10 years, which includes UK specific discounts and licensing concessions for on-premises software purchased through a Volume Licensing Agreement.
In January, we renewed the MoU under a slightly different name – the ‘Education Cloud Transition Agreement’ – the reason for the change of name is to indicate that this is a transition agreement, to allow UK Schools the time to move to Cloud Services e.g. Office 365 Education and take advantage of the inherent licensing and total cost of ownership savings which public cloud services can provide.
To be clear, the Education Cloud Transition Agreement is not a new licensing agreement, and we have no plans to phase out EES/OVS-ES.
Under the new agreement, Microsoft have agreed with DfE to extend the previous (UK only) Volume Licensing discounts until July 2018 for all existing customers, at which point the agreement expires.
Pricing is now equivalent for 1-year or 3-year term OVS-ES and EES agreements.
Office 365 Education continues to be free of charge for Education customers, and a move to Cloud services can save up to 60% on Microsoft licensing costs, on top of which schools can realise the savings they would make on Server hardware, maintenance, power, cooling etc etc.
Furthermore, Microsoft also now offers free Office 365 Pro Plus (full client downloads) to all Staff and Students on all of their devices at Schools licensed for Office on an OVS-ES.
To answer the individual queries:
@Gibson335
Q: Will EES (or a similar subscription) continue?
A: Yes, absolutely – OVS-ES/EES is our main licensing program for Education, and this is where Microsoft invests heavily for example;
· free Office for students and staff at eligible institutions,
· free Intune for Students at schools who have licensed EMS/Intune for Staff
· free Windows 10 Education for Students etc etc.
No plans to discontinue EES/OVS-ES.
Q: If so, and it's not as heavily discounted, by what percentage is it likely to increase?
A: Customers renewing their OVS-ES agreement will be able to continue to take advantage of UK specific pricing and discounts until July 2018 at which point the Education Cloud Transition Agreement expires.
A UK customer with an OVS-ES agreement which expires at any point between now and July 2018 can renew for 1 year or 3 years with UK discounted prices.
After July 2018 (should there not be a replacement agreement with DfE) Academic pricing and discounts would still be in effect – i.e. they would not pay Commercial or Government rates.
Q: Will any items be unavailable under a new subscription which are currently available in EES?
A: No plans (that I’m aware of) for a new Academic subscription licensing program, EES and OVS-ES are our ‘hero’ licensing programs for Education.
Q: Will any further subscriptions be tied in with agreeing to a cloud-based solution?
A: No, in fact Office 365 Education is available for free for all UK Education customers without the requirement of a volume licensing agreement.
Q: If current 3-year agreement expires in July 2018 or later, will MS allow that agreement to lapse early to allow us to sign up for a new 3-year deal? (Unlikely I know, but may as well ask if there's room).
A: No, this would not be possible. However, schools can start to make costs savings between now and July 2018 by migrating to Cloud services.
@Gshaw
Q: For FE & HE customers what will our pricing look like after June 2016, will on-site infrastructure licenses i.e. Windows Server, SQL Server etc. become considerably more expensive i.e. >20% cost increase.
A: Microsoft is working with UK Government to continue to provide the same EES pricing terms detailed above for HE and FE customers. More news on this in the next few weeks
Q: After 2018 will EES effectively become a paid subscription to Office 365 Education with no other licenses available for on-premises servers?
A: No, we intend to continue to provide on premises licensing for Microsoft technology through the EES/OVS-ES agreement, with the option to add Cloud Services e.g. Office 365, Azure through the same agreement.
Q: If our on-premises licenses get removed what alternative are MS going to provide e.g. in Azure considering many organisations have critical services running on Microsoft server platforms e.g. MIS systems that don't have a suitable cloud equivalent?
A: No plans to remove on premises licensing from the EES/OVS-ES agreement.
Azure is a cost effective alternative to on-premises solutions. Microsoft has just announced that customers with Windows Server licenses (with Software Assurance) are permitted to move their server instances into Azure and only pay for the Compute time i.e. buy on-premises Windows Server licenses, and you can deploy into the Cloud.
@Kevin_Lane
Q: Have they got plans to remove software assurance.
A: No plans to remove Software Assurance
Q: Working at home rights is anything going to be changing with this
A: Not that I’m aware of. In terms of Office, Microsoft now provides Office 365 Pro Plus for free to all Staff (and Students) at Schools who license Office on their EES/OVS-ES agreement – this allows Schools to provide Office to staff for 5 x PC/MAC + 5 x iPad/Android devices so is actually a better option than WAH. https://products.office.com/en-GB/student?tab=teachers&ms.officeurl=teachers
@Edu-IT
Q: Will Office 365 become chargeable?
A: We have no plans to charge for Office 365 Education – in fact Microsoft has recently made additional functionality free to Education customers e.g. unlimited archiving, legal hold, encryption etc.
@Jmak
Q: Please can you clarify when the price changes will impact existing subscribers?
A: The new Education Cloud Transition Agreement MoU expires 30th June 2018, however up to that date, customers can lock in current pricing for up to 3 years
Q: I might quite fancy moving my infrastructure into the cloud. Can you provide a price list please?
A: All pricing is set by our partners, however we can certainly help estimate the costs of a migration to Public Cloud Services such as Azure
@Jawloms
Q: If it's a push to more stuff being cloud based, what requirements do they put on the broadband connection?
A: This all depends on the number of users, data etc etc. That being said, we do provide planners, calculators and tools here https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Network-planning-and-performance-tuning-for-Office-365-e5f1228c-da3c-4654-bf16-d163daee8848?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
Many thanks to Microsoft Education UK for helping out with your queries.
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