Purchasing | News
Microsoft Launches Enrollment for Education Solutions Licensing
Microsoft has opened a new long-term subscription licensing program for academic institutions called "Microsoft Enrollment for Education Solutions." The program offers "reduced entry requirements" and is based on an annual head count rather than the number of devices. The EES program is open to both K-12 and higher ed.
The program creates a single, subscription-based academic agreement for Microsoft Enterprise software, which includes Office Professional 2010, Windows 7 Enterprise, the Core Client Access License suite, and the Enterprise CAL suite.
According to Microsoft, with EES, "small schools that have historically not been able to acquire subscription licenses are now able to access Microsoft software and services at a low cost in order to help students interact, collaborate and learn." Institutions can pay for the service annually or via a three-year enrollment.
The new program works by counting full-time equivalent employees once per year to maintain compliance. Staff members who are added throughout the year are "automatically fully licensed," Microsoft indicated, "so administrators only need to verify these licenses annually. Institutions are therefore fully covered for desktop platform products regardless of yearly fluctuations in the number of employees or devices."
Under the program, institutions with as few as five employees can obtain licenses through a Microsoft education reseller under the Open Value Subscription Agreement for Education Solutions; those with 1,000 or more FTE employees can obtain licenses from a Microsoft Large Account reseller under the Campus and School Agreement.
Student licensing is available for both institution-owned and student-owned devices, and participating schools receive access to Live@edu at no charge. Live@edu is Microsoft's hosted communication and collaboration suite for education. It includes Office Web Apps; mail (with 10 GB inboxes for each user); 25 GB storage per user; video chat; IM; alerts; blogs; and various collaboration and document sharing services.
Microsoft Enrollment for Education Solutions is open to qualified public and private academic institutions, including K-12 schools, preschools, vocational schools, junior colleges, colleges, and universities. Administrative offices and boards of education may also qualify. Further information can be found here.
