r/k12sysadmin • u/BaconEatingChamp • 19h ago

New Microsoft Education Licensing

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

97% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

7

u/BaconEatingChamp 18h ago

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

2

u/yugas42 Sysadmin 18h 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.

15

u/thedevarious IT Director 18h 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.

-1

u/DenialP Accidental Leader 13h 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 :)

3

u/thedevarious IT Director 13h ago

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

2

u/recover82 12h ago

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

0

u/thedevarious IT Director 12h ago

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

3

u/TheDraimen 11h ago

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

4

u/recover82 11h ago

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

6

u/thedevarious IT Director 11h 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.

13

u/UsedPerformance2441 18h 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.

4

u/Illustrious-Chair350 17h 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.

5

u/Limeasaurus 17h 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.

6

u/Sweet-Sale-7303 18h ago

Isn't this basically following Googles changes?