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There are two types of software licensing agreements the UC Berkeley campus community can use to purchase Vista and Office 2007. The Microsoft Select program is available to eligible departments, faculty, staff, and students. The Microsoft Consolidated Campus Agreement (MCAA) is primarily used by departments to cover faculty and staff.
Departments, staff, faculty, and students are all eligible to purchase Microsoft products individually under the Select agreement. The Select agreement is a purchasing agreement that allows any UC department, faculty, students, and staff to purchase Microsoft licenses at the lowest price. Since this is a system wide agreement, there are no minimum requirements and departments can purchase at any time. The agreement separates the purchase of software into its constituent parts: license, media, and documentation. Purchasing Microsoft Select products can be very cost-effective when licensing or upgrading a quantity of systems, since in general it is not necessary for every user to have a set of manuals or a copy of the CDs. For more information on the Select program, please visit the CDWG website.
Departments are eligible to purchase Microsoft products under the MCAA agreement. Through the consolidated MCAA Subscription - with pricing and options customized specifically for the University of California - departments can get the most current Microsoft software at special UC pricing. With the Campus Agreement Subscription, departments license all of the computers and users in the participating departments for use of the most current Microsoft software for 12 months. A key factor in determining the cost of enrolling in UC MCAA is a special full time employee (FTE) count. In essence, this calculation converts the department's employee headcount into an FTE count by applying certain criteria based on user type (faculty/staff/student). The typical result is that the FTE count is significantly lower than the headcount, though this is not true in all circumstances.
Enrollment in MCAA will open to departments in April 2007. To enroll, departments should contact Paul Cardamone at or visit the CDWG website.
Many departments have joined in the MCAA agreement, and CDWG currently tracks this information for UC Berkeley. In order to verify if you are covered by MCAA, we suggest that you contact the technical support staff in your department.
Volume Activation 2.0 is a new requirement in the Windows Vista operating system which requires activation of each Windows Vista license acquired under a Volume License agreement. Volume Activation 2.0 provides the following two types of keys, and three methods of activation, to customers:
Depending on the needs of their organization and its network infrastructure, customers can opt to use any of these activation methods. More information about KMS and MAK activation methods can be found on the Activation Methods page. Faculty and staff at UC Berkeley should contact their departmental IT staff to determine which method to use. Systems administrators running pilot programs can take advantage of the KMS already being used for another pilot. Visit the UC Berkeley CalShare Windows Vista site for more information. Ultimately it is expected that IST will run a KMS server for the campus, although the date by which that will happen has not yet been established.