Dear Ellen,
I think they are misunderstanding the situation regarding MS
licensing . It may be easier to understand if you think of running a college
website using Win 2003 server with IIS and SQL server to hold data. In this
situation there is no need to have a licence for each user who is accessing
the web pages - the only licences needed are the ones for the server
software. If that wasn't true some sites would need very large numbers of
licences for each web user accessing their pages! Similarly if the web
server uses a script to submit a mail message to an Exchange server you
don't need an Outlook licence for the web server (unless you are using
Outlook + its API on the web server in your script of course!)
Blackboard is merely a sophisticated web server in this context. Now there
may be BB licence implications with offering access to BlackBoard to people
who are not staff or students of your institution and you would need to take
this up with BlackBoard. In the past I've found they understand this sort of
situation though - they used to have a formula for deciding the FTE from a
variety of different types of users (including short course, alumni etc.)
Hope this helps.
Laurence
Laurence Fouweather
Director
Oxford Academic Technology Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)1865 451 670
Mobile +44 (0)7968 692 380
Fax +44 (0)7813 889 526
Web www.oxact.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ellen Lessner
Sent: 16 February 2005 15:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Bb remote access and additional client licenses for the SQL
server??
I've just been sent the following from our (understandably) concerned IT
Unit. Can anyone tell us whether they have had the same happen to them?
"We have just heard that if we offer BB from outside we have to buy a client
licence for the SQL server and possibly an email client licence.
If we give access to user areas we also have to buy a windows client
licence.
Staff are covered by the campus agreement, but students are not.
We are investigating the costs."
Many thanks -
Ellen Lessner
ILT Development Coordinator
Abingdon and Witney College
01235-216276
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