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Microsoft opens up public sector sales

by Ben Furfie
Monday, October 6th 2008 at 11:35AM

Microsoft opens up public sector sales Microsoft has massively expanded the amount of government organisations applicable to its discount scheme, making a large amount of public sector entities open for its smaller retail and reseller partners to sell to.

Available from October 1st, the scheme is called Open Licensing Program for Government, and will allow reseller and retailer partners to sell Microsoft software at a pre-arranged, discounted rate to a much wider base of government bodies, such as GPs, town councils and local development centres.

These entities were previously inaccessible to smaller retailers and resellers, and so has the potential to provide a new and lucrative revenue stream.

"Today we've found that our smaller resellers are already selling into the public sector, perhaps with hardware and other software types, but this gives them the opportunity to sell Microsoft software as well at a volume discount," said Mark Smith, head of SMS&P Public Sector at Microsoft.

"Currently there is no opportunity for them to sell government open licensing or open licensing utilising the government discounts. So government organisations wanting to take advantage of the agreement Microsoft has with UK government may go through larger account resellers as they can only go by Select Enterprise agreement.

"Open is open government licensing, providing that discount to all of our value added resellers, and distribution partners, so they can sell into government Microsoft licenses today, which they can't do now.

"The discount is a significant reduction that is in line with what all government organisations receive from Microsoft. The open pricing discount is at the same level as what the larger organisations can achieve."

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Tags: Microsoft, Government, windows, licensing

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