The agreement is part of a contract that UB negotiated as the lead institution in discussions among the software giant, itself and five other SUNY campuses: the colleges of Technology at Alfred, Delhi and Morrisville, the College at Fredonia and the College of Optometry.

The contract involves the purchase of a campus-wide license by the university at a cost of approximately $492,000 that gives UB the right to access the software; an additional $92,000 was allocated to pay for the actual CDs that contain the software.

Considered to be the largest software-distribution program in the history of the university, the agreement provides full- and part-time students with software worth nearly $1,000 for a fraction of that cost, part of which is being subsidized by the existing student-technology fee. The cost of distributing the software to faculty and staff is being supported by the Office of the Chief Information Officer.

"The Microsoft contract provides all of us at UB—faculty, staff and students—with the latest productivity tools at a very reasonable institutional cost," said Voldemar Innus, chief information officer, who signed the contract for the university. "The provision of this software also maximizes our ability to easily share information using a standard set of tools."

"The University at Buffalo should be commended for the work it is doing to create a seamless, connected, learning community for the students and faculty," said Anthony Salcito, Microsoft education director, East Region. "Microsoft is committed to working with schools and universities like UB to ensure that all students, faculty and staff have access to technology and the tools and skills to support learning today and for a lifetime."

Innus noted that the contract is a very important piece in the "iConnect@UB program," which encompasses all of the ways that UB prepares students for the "wired world" by making available to them the best IT tools.

"iConnect@UB is the way we live IT on this campus," added E. Bruce Pitman, vice provost for educational technology. "The Microsoft agreement is going to become a critical piece of that program by making student-faculty communication easier, while also boosting efficiency in campus operations."

He noted that students will benefit from this agreement even when they are no longer in school since, according to the terms of the agreement, students own a license for these products, allowing them to keep the software once they leave the university or graduate.

Pitman said that the agreement was the result of an intensive team effort among IT staff across the university.

The Microsoft Campus Agreement will provide to all UB students, faculty and staff the following products:

• Microsoft Office 2000 and Microsoft Office 98 for Macintosh, which is the most widely used package of integrated productivity tools used to create, publish and analyze data; each includes Word for creating documents for print or publication on the Web, Microsoft Excel for developing charts views and graphs, PowerPoint for developing presentations that use images, clip art, animation, audio and video, and Outlook, which facilitates access to and organization of email, appointments and contacts, all information that can be shared with a Palm Pilot.

• Visual Studio Professional for Windows for building and managing distributed applications

• FrontPage 2000 for Windows, a Web-authoring tool for creating and managing Web sites

• Windows 32-bit operating system upgrades

"This represents a huge cost savings for students," said Raymond Volpe, director of UB Micro, the university's nonprofit computer store that is responsible for duplicating and distributing the more than 30,000 CDs, and acting as reseller on the $1 million contract, providing the software to UB and the other SUNY campuses. "But even more importantly, it ensures that faculty and students will be working with the same IT tools, so document exchanges for class assignments go smoothly. Now, if someone sends you an email message with a document attached, you won't have to worry about whether or not you can open it."

Beginning Monday, students, faculty and staff may obtain CDs containing the complete Microsoft Productivity Tool Kit from UBMicro, from the Microforms and Newspapers Desk in Lockwood Library, or the circulation desks in the Undergraduate and Health Sciences libraries.

Software for faculty and staff also will be available through the computer nodes.