Firstly, there’s no logo for SPLA so we had to make one up. Secondly if you haven’t heard of SPLA it stands for Services Provider Licence Agreement; a way for hosting companies to licence Microsoft products and host them for their own customers. You can read about it on Microsoft’s SPLA page and we’ll write a blog about it in the future because if you’re selling cloud such as Office 365 or Azure, you should be looking at SPLA as an additional revenue stream.
A question came up recently as to discounted academic pricing – are charities eligible for discounted academic licensing through SPLA?
Let’s investigate. The first place to look is the SPLA agreement. That includes a supplement catchily titled the Qualified Educational End User Addendum. Paragraph 1 states:
“Definitions. ‘Qualified Education End User’ means a Qualified Education User as defined for various regions at http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/DocumentHome.aspx or at a successor site Microsoft identifies.”
For Aardvark, see Aardvark. We investigate further and follow the suggested link to come across the Microsoft Product Licensing Search website which provides access to licensing terms, conditions and supplemental information relevant to the use of products licensed through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs. The page actually says ‘quick access’ but I took the word ‘quick’ out. In the document list you should find the Qualified Educational User Definition. This document at no stage mentions SPLA however because the SPLA agreement says that education users are defined here, then we’re good to continue.
Section G lists Charitable Organisations which operate on a not-for-profit basis and whose aims are the relief of poverty; the advancement of education; the advancement of social and community welfare; the advancement of culture or the advancement of the natural environment as being included in the definition of Qualified Education User.
I imagine David’s Ferrari California Purchase Fund doesn’t count in this eligibility list.
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