October 26, 2007...3:50 pm
Becta Reports Microsoft
Things must be bad when Becta, the UK department of education IT advisory agency, of all people decides to report Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading. When I worked in education and IT support it was hard to get anybody to think outside the box in terms of the true cost of licensing and much use was made of advantageous licensing terms for Microsoft software and the leeway of contiguous vs. primary licensing which meant that if a library had 10 computers the school could estimate that no more than 6 at any one time would be using Office at exactly the same time and so money could be saved on licensing costs (see my own experience below).
Licensing Schmicensing
Lately different licensing terms have been made introduced to reduce the cost to education by making ongoing smaller yearly subscription payments rather than higher one off payments.Keep in mind too that in server based networks licenses are required for each computer that connects to the server in addition to licenses for the operating system (Windows 2000,XP or Vista) and the software on it (Microsoft Office, Adobe photoshop etc). It can all become a lot of money even at discounted prices.
Flexible Real World Use
The flexibility of fixed one off licensing based on actual real world use is lost on the subscription model where Microsoft requires payment for every machine in the school whether the software is used on it or not.For example on a 300-500 machine network that can still amount to a lot of cash each year when weighed against , say 270 licenses for Office based on actual real use at any one moment of time in the school day (it would be amazing if a 500 machine network had every single student using office at exactly the same time).
Anti Competitive
Becta’s complaint accuses Microsoft of anti competitive practice and changing the rules of licensing in an unfair and anti competitive way. Often Microsoft will donate software to education probably in the knowledge that once an establishment starts getting used to using that software and no other that it will be safe to introduce higher or changed licensing terms later because the user is locked in to what they know and so it’s a case of pay up or the hassle of introducing an alternative at short notice (always unpopular with teachers).
My Own Experience
I used to work in a secondary school where the head of IT and headteacher viewed licensing payments as dead money and would avoid paying for licenses by scribbling out my contribution to budget allowances and allocating a token payment which would usually be rounded down to widely incredulously low figures for simultaneous Office use across at 350 machine network. I used to caution against this in the assumption that at some point in the future licensing terms may change (mind you they were an odd lot. I came in as a volunteer originally and helped develop their network and introduce email ,only for the head to ban the use of email as it was “too democratic”).
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