We have great news to report: AWS (Amazon Web Services) recently announced that users can run Microsoft 365 productivity apps using the licenses they already have.
The removal of this major licensing limitation enables us to expand the possibilities for your virtual learning environments even further.
The virtual situation
Our education clients rely on virtual desktops—cloud-hosted computers that provide a consistent and secure environment for learning.
To make our virtual desktops run at their best, we use AWS WorkSpaces technology, which has a strong reputation supporting virtual desktops going back 10 years. WorkSpaces-enabled virtual desktops run in the AWS Cloud. It’s secure, reliable, and scalable.
With our virtual desktops, campuses and students can stream a variety of applications via a modern browser from any place at any time, using any supported device. Our users need productivity solutions to do their best work. But access to Microsoft 365 apps via WorkSpaces-enabled virtual desktops required paying for an extra license—until now.
Expanding your options
As of August 1, 2023, AWS customers “can use Microsoft 365 licenses through a ‘bring your own license’ (BYOL) model” on Amazon WorkSpaces services.
This means our clients—and their students—can apply their current MS 365 licenses via our virtual desktops to use the range of MS applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more. Customers can also use Microsoft Project and Microsoft Visio under the new licensing terms.
You’ll no longer face additional fees or costs when running Microsoft 365 productivity applications on our virtual desktops, and we can confirm there’s no special setup required. Just log in as you normally would.
Our virtual learning solutions already included Microsoft OneDrive for syncing files between applications, virtual desktops and labs, and local devices. The newly announced licensing freedom only adds to the value that Propeller brings with our sole focus on education.
Contact Us – See what Propeller’s virtual learning environments can do for your institution—now with MS 365 apps at no extra cost.
About Propeller
As education IT veterans, our founders want all students to thrive beyond the bounds of a traditional campus and the confines of limited resources. We believe that technology should never get in the way of a school’s or a student’s ability to grow and engage with the world. With smart cloud computing, we saw an unmatched opportunity to help make better virtual learning possible for students on the devices they already have, freeing K-12 schools, community colleges, and universities from costly and burdensome software and hardware.
