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It's in Gloucester's budget: $137,952 for Microsoft operating system update [Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)](Daily Press (Newport News, VA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 24--GLOUCESTER -- Gloucester County is continuing a three-year project this year to bring all of the Microsoft licenses on county computers up to date. For this year, which is year two of the project, the county has budgeted $137,952 under the Information Technology and GIS Department. According to Scott Varner, director of the department, the total for all Microsoft EA Licensing for the county is $413,856. "Microsoft broke it up into three equal payments over three fiscal years," Varner said. "This project was started last fiscal year and involved Microsoft auditing our environment to determine the correct licensing numbers for desktop and server environments. At the end of every fiscal year, we perform a true-up with Microsoft to determine our exact licensing in case we added licenses or dropped licenses." He said he expects the payment to be lower this year because of the county's move to Microsoft Office365. "This new licensing model from Microsoft bundles some of the individual licensing models and is hosted by Microsoft," Varner explained. "This reduces our need for onsite physical hardware and makes county email available 24/7 through the web. The best part is that we get more licensing for less money." So far this fiscal year, Varner said his team has upgraded all county desktops and laptops to Microsoft Windows 7, as well as upgrading all machines to Office365 and migrating county email to the Microsoft cloud. Frances Hubbard can be reached by phone at 757-298-5834 Line by line Each day the Daily Press highlights individual line items from state and local budgets. Read the full series at http://www.dailypress.com/watchdog. ___ (c)2014 the Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) Visit the Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) at www.dailypress.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |