Software Licensing Helps Reduce Software Costs and Increase Access for Students
The College of Science and Engineering was able to reduce software costs and provide access to students in other colleges by working with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) Software License Contract Management service.
Challenge
College of Science and Engineering (CSE) faculty, staff & students need access to a specialized software, Matlab, for class assignments and research. The college had to invest significant resources to manage the contract and distribution of the Matlab software license.
Creating a surface contour plot in Matlab
Solution
The college was able to reduce costs and provide access to students in other colleges by working with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) Software License Contract Management service.
OIT began managing the college’s student license for Matlab in January of 2012. The license allows the college’s students to install a copy of the software and associated toolboxes on their personal computers. One of the benefits that OIT helped manage was sharing the cost of the license, not only with the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, but also with students across the Twin Cities campus. The collected fees help to offset the cost of next year's license renewal for CSE.
Outcome
Working with OIT to manage the Matlab software license has saved the college a lot of time that can now be used to supporting research and instruction.
Because of the success of OIT’s management of the Matlab software license, CSE has turned over the management of several other licenses for them and there are plans for more in the future.