Campus and School Agreements Amended

Campus Agreements and School Agreements (known collectively as CASA at Microsoft) will be more flexible and easier to administer as a result of changes introduced in Dec. 2007. Major changes that mark the shift from version 3.4 to version 3.5 include complementary MSDN Academic Alliance memberships for CASA customers, lower buyout prices, free evaluation rights, step-up rights, and exclusion of low-end PCs from licensing requirements.

What’s New?

Campus Agreements let higher-education institutions purchase one-year to three-year subscriptions for use of Microsoft software in classrooms and on faculty and staff computers. School Agreements are a similar offering for primary and secondary schools and district offices. Both agreements offer an option that lets students load the software on personal computers or computers checked out from the institution.

Major changes in version 3.5 of these agreements include the following:

MSDN Academic Alliance Membership changes. Many colleges and universities have used the MSDN Academic Alliance (AA) program to get Microsoft software for use on computers used in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classrooms and labs, and on the PCs of students in those programs, but a free introductory year was not renewable in subsequent licensing enrollments. MSDN AA has been renamed Developer Academic Alliance and is now free with a current Campus Agreement; a new version for art and design schools and departments, the Designer Academic Alliance, provides them with the Microsoft Expression Suite of graphics design tools. School Agreement customers get a school membership to the MSDN AA High School program, which provides Microsoft Visual Studio and other tools.