Eduserv deal with Microsoft to save £1 million

Universities and colleges are set to benefit from cheaper prices on Microsoft products following an agreement with non-profit IT services group Eduserv.

Previously, Microsoft offered price discounts to educational institutions with more than 3,000 staff - so about 20 across the UK. The new three-year agreement means as many as 650 higher and further educations can enrol in the Microsoft Campus pricing scheme.

"This has combined the demand in universities and colleges, the smaller institutions, in such a way that everybody gets the best discount," said Peter Walker, Eduserv's marketing director. "There's no precommitment of spend or other such mechanism."

The Microsoft Campus scheme offers a savings of about seven per cent for Desktop Campus, Office, CoreCAL, EnterpriseCAL and Windows Upgrade licences, according to Eduserv.

The exact savings depend on the reseller and setup the institution chooses, but Eduserv believed the deal could save higher education (HE) schools some £1 million in licensing fees over the three years of the agreement.

Stephen Butcher, chief executive of Eduserv, said: "Aggregating demand for Microsoft products through this agreement will result in a saving of £1m for HE institutions alone."

Ian Cook, operations manager at Manchester Metropolitan University, added: "The new agreement will provide immediate financial benefit for those institutions who have less than 3,000 staff. In the case of my own institution, we'll have considerable savings that can be re-invested elsewhere."

Prices and services offered by the eight resellers will be comparable via the Eduserv website.

As part of the agreement, Microsoft and Eduserv are setting up a portal, to bring together educational customers of the software giant. "Microsoft will get a strong feedback of what they're doing well or not so well," Walker said.

Last month, Becta, the government body for education and IT, referred Microsoft to the Office for Fair Trading (OFT), citing concerns with interoperability and anti-competitiveness with school software licensing.

"Becta's position is a strategic one," said Walker. "As a government department, they are rightfully taking the lead on open standards."

Eduserv must be more pragmatic, he said. "But universities and colleges need to carry on with products they've already got. Ours is a pragmatic approach to help deliver value today."

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