How licensing improvements enable the Microsoft Education Roadmap
Enhancements to Microsoft Academic Volume Licensing programs make server software more accessible, affordable, and supportable.
Microsoft is committed to helping address education challenges while improving teaching and learning opportunities in the 21st century. When designing policies that help enable educational improvements, it is important to address the barriers to software availability. That is why Microsoft is implementing enhancements to our Academic Volume Licensing programs that make server software more accessible, affordable, and supportable. These enhancements can help improve access to innovative solutions and software that drive the Microsoft Education Roadmap to create 21st century learning environments.
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Facilitating better options from service providers
An important decision to make when implementing your vision for information and communications technology (ICT) is whether to manage your ITC infrastructure internally or team with an experienced service provider. For institutions who decide to have a service provider host part (or all) of their ICT infrastructure, such as a Learning Gateway solution, Microsoft has made enhancements to our hosting/service provider offering, called the Academic Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA). These enhancements include a more comprehensive list of available products and more affordable pricing that can better enable service providers to offer you solutions tailored to your needs and budget.
Enabling innovative software and solutions
Microsoft Academic Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) build and deploy software solutions for education based on Microsoft technologies. To create the type of innovative and powerful solutions you need to enable your 21st century learning environment, these ISVs must have access to the right software and technologies at prices that make it possible to create effective and affordable solutions. To make this possible, Microsoft is enhancing the Academic ISV program by making a more comprehensive list of products available to Academic ISVs at more affordable pricing.
Improving server software affordability
One of the barriers to deploying server-based software solutions is the cost of server software licenses. To help address this, Microsoft is restructuring the pricing of several server products for education to make them more affordable.
Empowering Digital Inclusion
Digital Inclusion is a critical piece of the Microsoft Education Roadmap that can help empower mobile learning, communication, and collaboration. One barrier to Digital Inclusion is a lack of access to server-based tools, applications, and information by students, faculty, administrators, and parents. Building on the progress made by making student Client Access Licenses (CALs) more affordable and accessible, Microsoft has made it easier for Microsoft Academic Volume Licensing customers to provide their external users with access to servers through the following license grants:
Parent/guardian CAL grant
School Agreement, Academic Open License, and Academic Select License customers who acquire Client Access Licenses (CALs) for students can provide server access to parents and guardians of licensed student users without purchasing separate CALs.
External Connector grant
Campus Agreement or School Agreement customers who meet the criteria below may provide server access to external users with no-cost External Connector licenses. These licenses can be used to provide server access to prospective students, alumni (student and faculty/staff), and students and faculty/staff of collaborating academic institutions or government institutions. Customers are still required to purchase External Connector licenses or CALs for use by any other communities.
Note: Customers who rely on External Connectors, but do not qualify for the grants listed above can also have improved access due to lower prices of External Connector licenses.
