Microsoft opens up public sector discount licensing

Microsoft has widened its public sector licensing discount levels to allow resellers to sell competitive licences to organisations with five PCs or more.

Up to now the discount licensing options have been available to large government departments like Health and Work and Pensions but the scheme has now changed to make sure Microsoft doesn’t lose out on customers that would find commercial licences too expensive.

Mark Smith, head of SMS&P public sector at Microsoft, said that town halls and smaller public sector players had been denied access to discount pricing and extending the Open Licensing Programme would enable resellers to target 47,000 organisations, “where Microsoft does not have any reach”.

“Any of our resellers can go and sell open government licensing and most already speak to the smaller organisations but up to now have not been able to provide the discount,” he said.

Microsoft revealed that it was planning to widen the discount licensing scheme to benefit SME focused resellers earlier this year.

Mark Johnson, business unit manager for software at Bell Micro, said the changes would benefit distribution and resellers.

“Historically the licence scheme has only gone through LARs and now it will go through distribution and the open reseller channel,” he said.

“It is something we are educating the channel anout and it will get more activity in the government sector,” he added.

Mike Lawrence, managing director at BentPenny, said that a lot of resellers wanted to sell into the public sector and Microsoft’s move was welcome but it was still often frustrating dealing with the government.

“Public sector is a holy grail,” he added “but you can get paid slowly and they can be very litigious and that is not Microsoft’s fault but the way the government deals with people.”