Microsoft's new licensing options.
| "My phone's been ringing off the hook," Eric Harrison at the Multnomah Educational Service District in Portland, Ore says. "Schools are looking at what Microsoft wants them to do, and it increases their cost significantly." |
SEATTLE ?ELast month, 24 school districts in Washington and Oregon received a sobering letter from Microsoft.
The software giant gave the districts 60 days to produce receipts accounting for every copy of Microsoft software being used anywhere on school property. But many school PCs are donated or have programs loaded by students or teachers with no documentation.
In the same envelope came a sales brochure highlighting the merits of signing up for a "volume license" similar to those in a new licensing program for companies. Rather than endure an audit, the schools could pay Microsoft an annual fee based on the number of computers capable of running Microsoft software.
The districts scrambled to organize software audits and agonized over whether to pay the annual fee, which could run $40 a PC, or, they say, risk being fined for software piracy. "We thought it was very heavy-handed," says Steve Carlson, associate superintendent of information and technology at Beaverton Schools in Oregon.
Microsoft has sent 500 audit notices with accompanying sales brochures to 500 school districts in 30 states. Its corporate clients have been feeling similar heat. Some 6% of 1,400 businesses surveyed last month by Information Technology Intelligence and Sunbelt Software said they had been threatened with an audit if they didn't sign up for a new licensing program; 26% said Microsoft alluded to the possibility of an audit.
"Microsoft is trying really hard to move from selling software in boxes to selling software by subscription," says Stu Sjouwerman, Sunbelt Software president. "It is the 800-pound gorilla flexing its muscles and everybody better beware."
Sherri Bealkowski, general manager at Microsoft Education Solutions Group, says, "We're trying to remind everybody that it's hard to stay compliant and to make them aware of the different options they have." The audit notices sent to the 500 school districts is "standard practice. We do it all the time," she says.
One option schools have: Call Eric Harrison at the Multnomah Educational Service District in Portland, Ore. Since 1997, Harrison has been developing networks based on the free Linux operating system. His latest project links 40 older PCs to a single set of software applications running on a central Linux server computer. The cost: $200 a seat vs. $1,500 a seat for PCs running Microsoft, he says.
Source : USATODAY.com
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