How does IU's agreement with Microsoft affect software use at IU?

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See IU's software agreement with Microsoft for specific details and background.

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Software choice

The Campus Agreement (CA) does not restrict Indiana University departments, students, faculty, and staff to using only Microsoft products. Through the CA, the university invests in Microsoft products that cover a broad spectrum of software needs. Since the CA provides purchased Microsoft products, the university has an economic incentive to use them. The university also proportionately devotes its support resources to the suite of products that the agreement provides. These two resource-dependent factors provide a strong incentive for IU to make use of Microsoft products.

However, IU is free to use other resources, and to acquire and support a wide variety of vendor products. While the presence of Microsoft products does lead many users to adopt products covered under the licenses, IU may still acquire competing products that meet specific needs.

UITS continues to evaluate, deploy, and support products that are of value to the university community. Microsoft products are only a subset of the software applications that UITS reviews, supports, and distributes. IU continues to maintain many other site licenses for a variety of purposes.

For productivity software (e.g., word processor, spreadsheet, presentation), the university primarily distributes and supports Microsoft products. However, users at IU may choose from a full range of products from many vendors.

Support for Microsoft products

The effect of the CA on users and non-UITS computing support providers is minimal. UITS provides primary product support via the Knowledge Base and front line support services, and second-level problem resolution via local, department-oriented services. UITS plays the main role in providing support for Microsoft products through the UITS Support Centers and service teams oriented toward individual computing support providers.

The CA includes a Microsoft Premier Support Program membership for IU. This provides UITS with expanded access to Microsoft incident packs, and allows the university to open problem incidents with Microsoft on a case-by-case basis. Individual computing support providers and users cannot make problem calls directly to Microsoft; rather, UITS acts as a broker for problem resolution. This ensures that IU's user community first looks to local support staff, who open incidents with Microsoft only when they need assistance in resolving a problem. Once support staff receive an answer, the information is available to everyone.

UITS also delivers Microsoft education to individual computing support providers in an intensive format through EdCert course offerings. Microsoft education is available to computing support providers who are registered local support providers (LSPs). For more information, email itps@iu.edu .

Windows operating system users

Note: UITS recommends that you use a current version of Windows on computers connected to the Indiana University network; see Recommended Windows operating systems at IU.

As part of the CA, when Microsoft releases new versions of its operating systems, students, faculty, and staff can upgrade to new versions at little or no cost, depending on the media used for installation. LSPs can contact IT Professional Services and Support at 812-855-3008 about obtaining media for their departments.

Mozilla users

At IU, the CA has no effect on the availability of Mozilla products, such as Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla products are open source, and therefore available for free download. IU students, faculty, and staff can also download Firefox and Thunderbird from IUware.

Macintosh users

At IU, the CA provides both Windows and Macintosh users with a number of popular Microsoft applications. See Software available through IU's agreement with Microsoft.

Note: Mac OS X is produced by Apple Computer, Inc., and is not available under a campus agreement. In the Student Technology Centers (STCs), student and faculty demand determines equipment offerings.

Indiana University's email strategy

The CA has little impact on IU's general email strategy, but it does impact the quality and price of the messaging service. UITS continually researches ways to improve its messaging infrastructure. Given the complexity and centrality of messaging in the university, the strategy has always been to concentrate on providing a reliable and universal messaging backbone architecture that can support multiple clients through open protocols. Given the demand for support of mail-enabled applications and better desktop email integration, UITS constantly evaluates various solutions.

The CA provides IU with access to the Microsoft Exchange Server technology group. This allows UITS to fine-tune and adapt the technology to IU's special needs through direct contact with Microsoft. The CA also gives UITS an essentially unlimited distribution of the Outlook client for Windows and Mac OS X. This makes it easy to count on consistent user client interface availability throughout the institution. More importantly, it provides the functionality consistent with many IU users' demands.

The CA will not dictate IU's client-side strategy. UITS will always look for and support the best clients on the market. Clients like Outlook and Entourage will enrich the alternatives available to IU's computer users, and adding them will build on the choices currently available.

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Last modified on November 15, 2011.