The mission of the IT Services Software Licensing team is to save Stanford University as much money as possible on software purchases by negotiating campus-wide and volume license contracts. The savings to the university are then passed on to individual licensees. We offer a variety of popular academic- and research-oriented products for departmental purchase, for use mainly on Stanford-owned machines, and some software for student personal purchase. We also license the software used on the campus computer clusters and for Essential Stanford Software. See also Essential Stanford Software: Fall 2007 Update in this issue.
New Software Releases in 2007
This past year we have seen some changes in the world of software. Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe, all announced major upgrades to their product lines. These three companies alone kept us on our toes for most of the year, as we endeavored to keep up with the latest news and buzz, and keep our clients informed of the progress of all the new releases. Adobe updated Acrobat and Creative Suite at the beginning of 2007, and released all new Creative Suite versions again six months later. Microsoft released several versions of Vista and Office 2007 for Windows in the same timeframe. See also New Microsoft Vista Operating System: Some Considerations Remain in this issue. Two products were put off until fall - Apple Mac OS X 10.5 and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, so we'll have more to look forward to later in the year.
Several other vendors released new software versions this year, including Stata, AutoCAD, COMSOL MultiPhysics, MATLAB, Mathematica, Movable Type, and SPSS.
Within the Stanford IT community, new software releases are not simple isolated incidents. Software Licensing coordinates with many other groups in IT Services before new versions are ready for use at Stanford. Our IT desktop support staff tests new versions of centrally-supported software for compatibility and vulnerability issues, and the Help Desk team learns how to use and support the products in order to route help tickets appropriately, or answer them directly. The Tech Training team offers classes on new versions as soon as they can. Since much of the training is provided in-house, they also need to acquire and learn the products quickly. The Documentation team helps us update our Software Licensing and Software_at_Stanford web sites. Cross-departmental teams discuss and plan how new software versions are deployed across campus, the issues that may arise, and the knowledge that we may share.
For More Information
See the Software Licensing Web site for ordering instructions and individual information pages on each product. Please call us at 724-2424 or email software@stanford.edu, if you have questions.
See also How to Find Software on Campus in this issue.
