Business Situation

DeVry University has more than ninety campuses across Canada and the United States, serving over 80,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The university offers courses in various sectors of business, management, technology, science and the arts. Courses are offered both on campus and online, allowing students to earn their degrees through distance education no matter their location.

DeVry had a Campus Agreement with Student Option covering 50,000 FTE. Their requirement to organize physical student media shipment was creating significant administrative and logistical cost.  They wanted a digital solution alternative to reduce that burden.

Solution

e-academy teamed up with DeVry University to build a custom WebStore, unique to the school. Students, faculty and staff were offered 3 distribution options:

• Pre-imaged laptop provided by HP and CDW-G,  with software activation key distributed by e-academy.

Business Situation

In the summer of 2009, Microsoft elected to pilot an Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) solution for North America. The pilot sought to overcome the many challenges posed by the delivery of physical media, including the cost of the media and delivery, and time-consuming post-sale product support. In addition, a study by Accenture/WSP showed that replacing traditional distribution of DVD/CD disk kit software with ESD could potentially result in a 91% reduction of carbon emissions.¹

Microsoft believed this ESD solution would be popular among resellers, faculty and students and that the convenience, combined with the visible price difference and the enormous environmental benefit, would drive incremental sales growth.

Solution

e-academy securely wrapped, configured and hosted popular Student Select software offerings for electronic distribution via its established network of over 5000 WebStores, for both K-12 and higher education, on behalf of many Large Account Resellers and Academic Education Resellers. Microsoft sent information regarding the ESD pilot directly to existing clients holding Student Select agreements with an option to opt out if desired. Encouragingly, no one did.

Most institutions chose to offer students the full range of products available through their Student Select agreements, while some chose to limit the products offered. Students were given the option to choose between digital delivery (ESD) or physical media shipment.* Payments were made online via Visa or Master Card.

Benefits

The pilot ran from August to October 2009. During that time, ESD was chosen by students 2:1 over physical media and overall sales increased by over 60% from a baseline established during the beginning of the pilot. A survey conducted revealed that 85% of customers preferred to buy all their Microsoft software via download if it was available.

Due to the pilot’s enormous success, ESD has since been further extended to rest of North America, and now the world! Since going live in North America in May 2010, the adoption of ESD across the e-academy network of managed stores has increased to 75% versus 25% for physical media.

¹Demonstrating the Benefits of Electronic Software Distribution, A study of greenhouse gas emissions reduction” An Accenture/WSP White Paper. October 2009.

http://www.digitalbychoice.com/en-gb/483648_CarbonFootprint.PDF

*Physical media shipment available only in North America.

Business Situation

Prestariang Systems, a Large Account Reseller (LAR) based in Malaysia, aims to train and certify learners to become professionals in the IT and technology sector. The company is known for aiding teachers with integrating technology into classrooms in order to give educators the necessary tools to prepare students for successful employment in the future.

The national laptop program in Malaysia needed a cost-effective and secure way to distribute Office 2010 Pro Plus along with their netbooks to over 120,000 K-12 students all over the country.

Solution

Prestariang partnered with e-academy Inc. to implement an Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) system to enable students to get the materials they need.  The e-academy ESD system:

We pioneered

1999: Development of the Microsoft Student Select program in North America (CD distribution) allowing institutions and students to take advantage of discounted productivity software.

2000: Electronic software rentals for the academic community with SPSS and Minitab, providing students with a cost-effective alternative for curriculum-based software.

2009: Electronic Software Delivery (ESD) for the Microsoft Student Select program in Europe and North America helping shift that program from physical to digital.

We enabled

Microsoft to launch and successfully manage the MSDNAA agreement worldwide, thus making this program accessible to eligible departments all over the world.

VMware to launch a scalable and robust VMware Academic Program (VMAP) delivering free software in over 20 countries and growing.

Adobe to streamline their Student Licensing Program (SLP) distribution channel while saving signicant administrative efforts by resellers, thus enhancing the end-user experience
for academic users.

We continue to help

Over 30,000 academic institutions and departments worldwide save thousands of dollars in yearly license management and distribution fees.

Contact us at sales@e-academy.com or visit our corporate website at www.e-academy.com to learn more about our solutions and hosted services.

Washington State University (WSU) is ranked as a top-tier research university by the Carnegie Foundation.  WSU provides world-class, hands-on education to a diverse student population of 24,400 statewide.

WSU joined Microsoft’s MSDNAA program in 2003.  At that time, the method WSU used to distribute MSDNAA software to departments was manual (by the program administrator at each department at an institution).  Specifically, they manually distributed both the MSDNAA software and product keys into the hands of the end-users.  As well, they were required to track software usage in order to meet Microsoft compliance standards.  End- users were therefore dependent on the program administrator in order to access software available from MSDNAA.

WSU needed a way to automate their software distribution process in order to allow students and faculty to get their hands on the latest developer software.  This access would also allow instructors to explore the latest technology in depth in their classrooms.

Solution

Microsoft partnered with e-academy in order to automate their MSDNAA software distribution process worldwide.  This partnership allows WSU or any qualified institution to use e-academy’s eLMS (e-academy License Management System) solution for free to automate the software distribution process throughout their respective campuses.

eLMS provides a hosted verification, delivery, compliance and reporting engine designed to fully manage software license distribution.  eLMS has a feature set designed to deliver software electronically in a secure fashion using e-academy’s Secure Digital Container (SDC) technology, verify the user through integration with a school’s authentication system (e.g. WSU’s Lightweight Directory Access Porta/Active  Directory (LDAP/AD), enforce quantity restrictions and download limits, deliver single use keys and track volume license distribution and capture all transactional activity in our reporting engine.

Microsoft has access to an e-academy supported reporting portal which provides detailed transaction reports from around the world.

eLMS automates the entire software distribution process from start to finish.  eLMS alleviates the administrative functions of the MSDNAA Program while offering an easy-to-use, 24×7 service to end users with the latest MSDNAA software programs. e-academy’s web based solution meets the needs of the program administrator, Microsoft and end users.

Benefits

For a school like WSU, the benefits are obvious:  they reduce administrative costs while providing quick, easy access to Microsoft software both inside and outside the classroom.  Because of the eLMS solution WSU has expanded its curriculum and improved the technical skills of both students and faculty.  Teachers are freed up to teach.  As well, eLMS’s has significantly reduced the time and labor expenses of Help-desk operations on campus.  In the case of WSU, eLMS has allowed the university to redirect staff to other projects.

The eLMS solution has also eased the software distribution process by minimizing the effect on the University’s IT resources. (i.e. The university no longer has to invest in buying a server to host the software; e-academy and Microsoft manage software hosting on their own servers).

Students and faculty have benefited by having 24X7 access to the program tools. “Students can collaborate from anywhere on team projects and they are able to practice their skills outside of class” says Jerry Gordon, Information Systems Coordinator, WSU

Finally, the reporting capability has allowed WSU to track all end user activity easily. This not only helps in meeting Microsoft’s compliance standards but helps identify if there is any software abuse by a single user.

You too can be successful in providing your academic institution with a trusted and comprehensive software license management system. Success can mean lowering distribution costs, improving existing license management processes, attaining control of the number of software licenses distributed or simply providing your users with the tools and software they need to be successful.

Contact us at sales@e-academy.com or visit our corporate website at www.e-academy.com to learn more about our solutions and hosted services.