2008 Woodie Awards
Dealing for Micro-costs with Microsoft
New contract gives students discounts on premium software
Brian Moser
Issue date: 11/20/03 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
Lakeland College students will soon have the opportunity to purchase certain Microsoft products for a reduced price through Lakeland.
There are four products that will be offered for the reduced prices: Office XP, Office XP Pro, Office Mac X, and Windows XP Pro.
Office XP has programs such as Word, Excel, FrontPage, and PowerPoint. Office XP Pro has the same products as Office XP, plus Microsoft Access. The Office Mac X software is for people who have Macintosh computers. Windows XP Pro is the most updated operating system Microsoft has so far.
This will not take effect immediately, and it will take about a month or two to smooth over all of the details, said Botana.
Students and staff can only acquire one copy of each type of software. Microsoft will keep track of who purchases which software programs.
The way one would go about purchasing these products is by e-mailing Microsoft. They will validate your e-mail as being part of Lakeland College and will give you a password, presumes Botana. The person ordering would go onto the internet site Microsoft sends and the person will be able to purchase the software online. This is how Botana believes the system will work, but he is not completely sure as these processes still need to be finalized.
These four products will not be the only products you can buy through Microsoft. As they keep updating their software, the new software will become available through this system for students and staff to purchase at the discounted price.
The discounted prices were sought out by Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (WAICU). WAICU is an organization that is set up through private colleges to lower costs.
This deal came together for a variety of reasons, said Vice President of Finance and Assistant Professor of Business Administration Joe Botana. He said that Tom Guckenberg, Vice President for the Information Technology at WAICU, was trying to negotiate a deal with Microsoft for discounted prices. Also, Microsoft has a new structure for selling software to colleges. The last point Botana mentioned was the purchasing power of WAICU because it consists of about 20 private colleges, which almost compares to a big university such as Madison.
With all of these events falling into place, a deal with Microsoft occurred. All of the colleges in WAICU had a choice to mark-up the software to make a profit or to let the students and staff purchase the products at the same cost as Lakeland.
Botana said that about half of the colleges voted to mark-up the price and half voted to let the students and staff purchase the products at a lower cost. Lakeland chose to give the students and staff the fully discounted price by not marking-up the products.
There are four products that will be offered for the reduced prices: Office XP, Office XP Pro, Office Mac X, and Windows XP Pro.
Office XP has programs such as Word, Excel, FrontPage, and PowerPoint. Office XP Pro has the same products as Office XP, plus Microsoft Access. The Office Mac X software is for people who have Macintosh computers. Windows XP Pro is the most updated operating system Microsoft has so far.
This will not take effect immediately, and it will take about a month or two to smooth over all of the details, said Botana.
Students and staff can only acquire one copy of each type of software. Microsoft will keep track of who purchases which software programs.
The way one would go about purchasing these products is by e-mailing Microsoft. They will validate your e-mail as being part of Lakeland College and will give you a password, presumes Botana. The person ordering would go onto the internet site Microsoft sends and the person will be able to purchase the software online. This is how Botana believes the system will work, but he is not completely sure as these processes still need to be finalized.
These four products will not be the only products you can buy through Microsoft. As they keep updating their software, the new software will become available through this system for students and staff to purchase at the discounted price.
The discounted prices were sought out by Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (WAICU). WAICU is an organization that is set up through private colleges to lower costs.
This deal came together for a variety of reasons, said Vice President of Finance and Assistant Professor of Business Administration Joe Botana. He said that Tom Guckenberg, Vice President for the Information Technology at WAICU, was trying to negotiate a deal with Microsoft for discounted prices. Also, Microsoft has a new structure for selling software to colleges. The last point Botana mentioned was the purchasing power of WAICU because it consists of about 20 private colleges, which almost compares to a big university such as Madison.
With all of these events falling into place, a deal with Microsoft occurred. All of the colleges in WAICU had a choice to mark-up the software to make a profit or to let the students and staff purchase the products at the same cost as Lakeland.
Botana said that about half of the colleges voted to mark-up the price and half voted to let the students and staff purchase the products at a lower cost. Lakeland chose to give the students and staff the fully discounted price by not marking-up the products.