Tom Greatorex
Broadband Manager
Telford & Wrekin LEA |
Like many Local Education Authorities (LEA) in the United Kingdom, the Borough of Telford & Wrekin LEA has specific challenges in providing a reliable IT infrastructure to its schools and colleges. These challenges are driven both by the complexities of class schedules and the diverse nature of their computer users. | Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources are most often made available to pupils and teachers in computer suites, which offer the benefits of an effective learning environment. However, because of the class schedules, the occupancy of these suites is very variable. In some cases hundreds of copies of expensive educational software must be installed on all workstations, even though only a fraction of the PCs are used at any one time. The Borough of Telford & Wrekin education ICT management had repeatedly tried to obtain licensing agreements based on concurrent usage, but software vendors had been reluctant to satisfy such requests without the confidence that the schools would remain within the boundaries of the agreements. There was a clear economic case for being able to enforce license limits. Software metering was the solution. | The Borough of Telford & Wrekin issued a request for tender and several metering products were evaluated. As a result of this process LanLicenser was selected for its functionality and scalability. With LanLicenser, the Borough of Telford & Wrekin education ICT management was at last able to prove to software vendors that they could enforce license limits at any time, and produce usage reports demonstrating compliance over time. This was a significant breakthrough and it allowed the Borough of Telford & Wrekin to achieve sizeable savings by negotiating more concurrent usage contracts.
| “The savings we achieved on licenses enabled us to pay back the LanLicenser investment in the first year and make a better use of our software budget.” |
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