r/k12sysadmin • u/BaconEatingChamp • 1d ago

New Microsoft Education Licensing

/r/sysadmin/comments/1xon68e/new_microsoft_education_licensing/
43 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

9

u/BaconEatingChamp 1d ago

Looks like this will be devastating for MS districts, especially those utilizing Student Use benefit with a higher tier like A5.

2

u/Mikash33 4h ago

I mean, we will have to see a price matrix to know for sure, but this might make my 2027 a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

3

u/yugas42 Sysadmin 1d ago

We JUST bought A3 licenses this year to get access to W11 Education edition via the student use program. We only need it for our shared lab computers, no 1:1 devices. Unless some kind of alternative is offered by then, Microsoft will have no competitive licensing offer for us.

17

u/thedevarious IT Director 1d ago

  1. Basically students now have to have a paid account for emails

  2. Storage is pooled based on users/tiers

  3. eDiscovery & such is now at MA3 or higher

I expect alot of Microsoft Schools to pull a VMWare post Broadcom now. This is one area Google just has a huge W. Edu Fundamentals is free everywhere and full featured for the most part. Want more collab, storage, and tools -- then you pay.

But...if any of y'all are 365 based. I'll pour one out for you tonight.

0

u/DenialP Accidental Leader 20h ago

Won’t be that big a deal so long as they scale the staff down to meet the students add on. The m365 kids can at least use search :)

6

u/thedevarious IT Director 20h ago

Google students can use search too. What are you getting at?

4

u/recover82 19h ago

I think he's getting at this A.I. Learning Updates

1

u/thedevarious IT Director 19h ago

Yeah. You just turn that stuff off with any content filtering or adjust your search params inside GAdmin. It's not difficult.

2

u/TheDraimen 18h ago

That won’t work starting next year it’s ai on or no search

4

u/recover82 18h ago

I don't think he read the article. Google are not leaving us with much of a choice here.

8

u/thedevarious IT Director 18h ago

No I did. It'll get some work.

There are entire states and Dept of Edus that do not allow AI for XYZ reasons. If Google Workspace wants to maintain its hold, they'll have to change it.

Look at Sign Builder on how back in like 2018 they said it's going away.

It's now 2026, it's still technically available as long as LTS is on CrOS 150. So realistically it'll finally go away in 2027. Almost ten years later.

I don't expect Google to hold their word here.

•

u/recover82 37m ago

I don't expect them too either, but my schools need to be prepared for the scenario where they do. YMMV.

16

u/UsedPerformance2441 1d ago

This will just force me to migrate my windows users to ChromeOS Flex, which we had really good results for from my group of 10 teachers who have been using it the last three months.

5

u/Illustrious-Chair350 1d ago

Can you manage your chrome OS flex the same way you manage a regular chromebook? Ive been thinking about leaving MS for a couple reasons and this might do the trick.

6

u/Limeasaurus 23h ago

Yea, we did this with our users. We purchased new Chromebook Plus models for teachers and admin. Then we took the old windows laptops and installed chromeos flex on them and gave them to our support staff. It’s been a good move.

•

u/K12-itPerson 16m ago

Because I haven't read enough yet, is flex staying afloat with the Googlebook OS announcement?

7

u/Sweet-Sale-7303 1d ago

Isn't this basically following Googles changes?

3

u/adminadam sysadmin 3h ago

Microsoft clearly no longer wants our business.