The Office Platform Team released two new Microsoft Office 2010 Accessibility Add-ins on March 17th. While comparatively small add-ins, they enable big things! Try them yourself by downloading via the below links.
The Subtitling Add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP)helps Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 users add closed captions to the video and audio files included in their presentations, which boosts their impact for those with hearing disabilities. This also enables video and audio in PowerPoint to be localized in different languages.
The DAISY Consortium, Save as DAISY for Office 2010 helps Microsoft Word users convert Word Open XML files to the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) format, which powers digital talking books and compatible software & braille readers for this with print disabilities. This version now supports Office 2003, 2007 and 2010.
To get a full picture of all the Office 2010 Accessibility features, you can do here
Last week we hosted several colleges from around the UK here at the Microsoft offices in Thames Valley Park where we talked about Live@edu and the various technical options and considerations there are when deploying.
Sessions included:
The event was well attended, and we hope to run events similar to this in the future.
For more information on Microsoft Live@edu and Office 365 for education, why not visit the product website?
For more information on Salford Software, why not visit their website?
Robin Chan, Voice TSP, UK Incubation at Microsoft Reading ran the Lync Education event on 4th March 2011 at Cardinal Place, London. Here is his summary of the event.
This event was the first we have run dedicated to Lync 2010 for the education segment and very well received and extremely popular. The event was oversubscribed, on the day we had 76 attendees with a mixture of people from universities, colleges, schools and local authorities.
The aim of the event was to drive awareness of Lync in general, how it can deliver significant cost savings, while improving productivity, collaboration and the enhancing teaching environment. A big focus for Lync is the delivery of Enterprise Voice, essentially the ability for Lync to be deployed as an full blown telephony solution, i.e. PBX replacement while also providing true unified communications.
The full agenda is available here, we started by discussing our vision of education and unified communications, followed by an overview of Lync. We had an series of very involving live demos which stepped through functionality available out of the box and how it could be applied in an education environment. We had session dedicated to the telephony functionality which pointed out the potential costs savings. We then had some excellent presentations from our customers talking about their experiences of deploying Lync:
· The Open University
· University of West of England
· Benenden School
We wrapped up the day by hosting an Expert Q&A
All the presentations are available here, for further information please visit http://www.lync.com
If you have any specific questions or would like to schedule an follow up meeting please contact your account manager or drop me an email Robin Chan
We have an large ecosystem of partners for Lync, below are a list of partners who have deployments of Lync/OCS with enterprise voice in the education segment:
Dell: Paul Merry - paul_merry@dell.com
Modality: James Rodd - james.rodd@modalitysystems.com
Dimension Data: Chris Clark - Chris.Clark@eu.didata.com
HP: Brian Fenix - Brian.Fenix@hp.com
As England prepare for their match tomorrow against Ireland in the 6 Nations and, with any luck take on another win, I have spoken to Ron Lafferty, the IT Manager at Johnny Wilkinson’s old school; Lord Wandsworth College. Ron has just led the college through the deployment of Microsoft Windows 7 a move that has scored positive results and given them the ‘win’’ they were looking from a software upgrade.
Back in March 2010, the decision was made to deploy Windows 7 and Office 2010, a decision that as you will read, really paid off. With their school policy of not replacing any desktops that were less than four years old and laptops less than three, they were not sure if the machines they had would make the move easily and had to prepare for the possibility of having laptops, computers and printers that wouldn’t work, and reverting back to their old system.
As a test, all staff were asked to bring in one of every machine that they had, from RM and Viglen desktops, to Acer Laptops, to see if the deployment of Windows 7 would be a clear run or whether they would they come up against a defence that would make the deployment a struggle. With over 10 different types of hardware to find drivers for, this did seem a bit of a challenge especially with some manufactures advising that this would prove too difficult to complete and saying the deployment wouldn’t work.
Not to be defeated, Ron and his IT team went ahead for the ‘try’, and after running tests found that actually despite warnings from some, the test machines not only deployed to Windows 7 but did so in a straight forward manner. This doesn't go to say that the deployment didn’t go with the odd little hiccup along the way on the software front, but most legacy software worked well and as Ron describes, the staff were ‘’very pleased with the test result.’’
The decision to go for a ‘try’ moved Ron and his team forward for the full ‘conversion’ and deploy Windows 7 to all 405 computers in the college.
“There was no repeat of issues we had expected from past experiences when performing software upgrades. One previous rollout had wiped whole systems and we could not afford a repeat of that situation. The level of system support calls between October 2010 and January 2011 went down to next to nothing. With the old network, support calls had played a big part in the IT team’s life and now our customers, the teachers and students, are much happier with what we provide. The process to move over was a smooth as silk!”.
Ron found the rollout so “smooth” that they’ve recommended deploying Windows 7 to two other independent schools that are now planning their rollouts with the assistance of Microsoft partner Rivanet.
So, not only have they taken on the tactics of deploying 10 test machines first before grappling with the overhaul of other machines, but they tackled opponents whose advise that this wouldn’t work and came out on top. For me, that shows a clear win.
As one of the top licensing resellers in the UK as well as an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), Viglen are well placed to understand the licensing needs of their customers.
A training course is now available at the University of Sussex to help customers understand how Microsoft licensing works and how you can get the best return on your investment.
With over 20 years experience of software licensing, Cheryl Lapham, Schools and Software Sales Manger at Viglen is regarded by many in the Education sector as one of the primary experts on Microsoft licensing in the UK.
If you would like to know more about Microsoft licencing, you can register for this free course here.
We would like to give you the opportunity to invite your customers to attend The Best of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2011 on Tuesday 3 May at Microsoft London, Cardinal Place.
Best of MMS UK 2011 will provide the best possible opportunity to learn about the latest IT Management products, solutions and technologies from Microsoft and how to apply them in your organisation. With a number of significant management product releases and announcements planned from Microsoft in the coming year, including some early Beta releases, this is an opportunity you won't want to miss!
This event is an exclusive opportunity to get an understanding of the latest news and insights on desktop, datacentre and cloud management products and solutions from Microsoft. We will share more expert knowledge and information than ever, covering current and upcoming System Center releases.
Please invite your customers to register and attend the Best of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2011 in May.
For more information and to register, please visit: www.microsoft.com/uk/bestofmmsuk2011
08.30 – 09:30
Registration
09.30 – 10.15
Empowered By The Private Cloud
10.15 – 11.00
Virtual Machine Manager 2012: What's In it and How It Enables Building Private Clouds
11.30 – 12.15
Opalis and Service Manager: Datacentre Automation in Action!
12.15 – 13.00
Service Manager: Simplifying IT Governance, Risk and Compliance
13.45 – 14.30
A First Look at Data Protection Manager 2012
15.00 – 15.45
Configuration Manager 2012: What's New?
15.45 – 16.30
Operations Manager 2012: Monitoring the Private Cloud
16.30 – 17.15
HP and Microsoft Tackle the Private Cloud Together
17.15 – 18.00
Networking and Close
Under this new agreement you can now license a single school, multiple schools or an entire school system, such as a local authority. You count your Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff once per year, so you don't have to track every single computer in your establishment. Full time equivalent are staff who work more than 200 hours per year in your school.
· Counting FTE staff once per year covers all staff and shared-use computers
· One annual payment for all software at academic prices
· Access to the most current version of licensed software
· Ability to downgrade to an earlier version of software
· Broad product selection available in all languages
· Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh platform
· Optional inclusion of computers exclusively dedicated to one student, and student’s own home computers
Customer Profile
Any qualifying academic institution, typically a School, College or University with 5FTE’s or more, looking for a simple, flexible subscription based volume licensing offer.
Minimum Requirements
5+ FTE’s is the minimum requirement to take advantage of EES via the OVS-ES programme
Products Availability
The customer may order subscription licences for a wide selection of Microsoft software through EES.
The Education Desktop platform package includes:
· Windows 7 Enterprise Upgrade
· Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
· Microsoft Core Cal or Enterprise CAL suite
Additional Products:
A broad selection of software and services are available as additional products under your EES. Additional products may be licensed in any quantity, ranging from one licence to organisation wide
Examples of software products available as additional products include Microsoft Office Visio, Microsoft Project, Windows Server and Exchange Server, as well as additional CALs or Microsoft Online Services.
You can see a complete list of additional products on the Microsoft Product List at www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/PL.aspx
Please refer to the Microsoft Volume Licensing Product list for complete details of currently available products.
Contract Type
Enrolment for Education Solutions transacted via Open Value Subscription - Education Solutions eAgreement
Renewing Agreement
one time 3-year extension option
At the end of your agreement, you have the following options:
· extend your subscription enrolment under the one-year licensed period
· submit a new subscription enrolment under the three-year licensed period
· exercise the buy-out option (see below)
· allow the subscription enrolment to expire, and de install the software
Pricing Levels
Contact your Reseller for specific pricing.
Student Licensing
Student Option licences are required for computers exclusively dedicated to one student, and available for student’s own home computers. Student and faculty/staff orders cannot be combined to meet the minimum requirement
Staying Current on Software
Customers are licensed to run any version of products, including product upgrades released during the designated agreement/order term
Access to Software Assurance Benefits
Yes
Work at Home Rights and Home Use Programme
Yes, for faculty and staff users counted within your FTE count
Sales Channel
View a list of Microsoft Education Large Account Resellers
View a list of Microsoft Authorised Education Resellers
How would you visualise this English-language panagram ‘’The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’’ ?
Microsoft has teamed up with Student Beans to give a student the chance to win a state-of-the-art HP Pavilion dv6-3125sa Entertainment Laptop. All you need to do is enter with an imaginative and creative PowerPoint slide that brings to life this panagram.
If you think you have the flare and creativity, you can find out more information and how to enter here
All entries need to be in by April 1st 2011.
Good Luck!