UW-Madison joins System in Microsoft agreement

A new agreement with Microsoft Corp. will enable university faculty and staff to use many Microsoft software products at a fraction of the normal academic price.

The university has joined other UW System campuses and the Wisconsin Technical College System in the Microsoft Custom Enterprise Agreement. Similar licenses with other popular software vendors are also being pursued.

Unlike individual licenses, the new Microsoft agreement enables all faculty and staff to use the products. Students will also be able to purchase a copy of the media under the program.

The agreements do not require faculty and staff to use any of the products.

The $2.175-million-per-year license agreement covers the next three years, with an option to renew for a fourth year. Products will be distributed through a new service called the Wisconsin Integrated Software Catalog.

UW–Madison’s portion of the annual license cost is $250,000, compared to the $571,000 spent campus-wide in the 1997-98 fiscal year on Microsoft products under what was called a “select agreement.” If another select agreement had been negotiated for this fiscal year, Microsoft pricing changes would have increased UW–Madison’s costs to $771,000, triple the cost of the first year of the new agreement.

Microsoft products included in the agreement are Windows 98 upgrade, Office 2000 Premium Edition, Office 98 Macintosh Edition, FrontPage for the Macintosh, Windows NT 4 upgrade, Visual Studio Professional and a limited number of additional infrastructure licenses, including all upgrades during the life of the contract. Distribution of the products will begin in October.