Before buying the latest version of Microsoft Office or Matlab, check out Computing and Communications Services' (CCS) site licensing agreement to see if you can get a group discount through the University.
“Through our Microsoft Academic Select licensing agreement, all of the server, application and operating system software is at a lower price than you could get it on your own,” says Bo Wandschneider, manager of Academic Services in CCS. “People can save anywhere from 20 to 75 per cent by buying it through us.”
CCS began negotiating for group discounts with software companies about a year ago when U of G's Information Services Committee realized the University could save a lot of money if software was bought in larger orders, rather than by single departments.
Dozens of products are available, all through the CCS website, www.uoguelph.ca/ccs/sitelicense.
Guelph is one of the first universities in Canada to distribute software through an electronic storefront developed by an Ottawa-based company called E-academy. Once U of G members use their central ID (e-mail account) to get into the system, they can access free software and buy other software with a credit card, department coding or their Express Card.
“They can download a lot of the software right from their computer, and we ship the products that can't be downloaded right to them,” says Wandschneider.
“We also invite people to contact us if there's anything they want,” he adds. Sometimes there's enough interest in a product to make a campus-wide site licensing initiative, but if not, he's happy to recruit another group or two to get a specialized group discount.
For more information or to request a site licence for a specific product, contact Academic Services at Ext. 58002 or swsales@uoguelph.ca.
