Almost 15 years ago the Brisbane Universities decided to pool their skills, knowledge and influence by combining their purchasing power to take on the software vendors. Known as the University Software Licensing Collaboration (USLC), the intention was to provide a forum where software licensing representatives could network and exchange information beneficial to their organisations as they sought to improve the negotiations and contracts for ICT software licensing arrangements for their respective institutions. 

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This collaboration has matured and transitioned through mutual cooperation and trust into a formal CAUDIT Community of Practice the benefits of which include assisting CAUDIT in achieving superior licensing agreements, pricing, terms and conditions for all CAUDIT member organisations. The Microsoft Campus subscription agreement provided the original impetus and now USLC is a well recognised group when it comes to software vendors wanting to negotiate with the higher education sector.

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Conference presentations (SPUSC and EDUCAUSE) raised the profile of the group with many universities across Australia joining the group and participating in activities. Now with CAUDIT Strategic Procurement support the USLC can provide key licensing information to Community members. USLC also has links to the US Software Licensing group. 

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USLC has a group email address and a sharepoint site to facilitate communication and document storage for members (Click here to join the email list)

 

USLC has regular meetings every 2 months - our planned meeting dates for 2018 are:

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14 March

9 May

11 July

12 September (SLAM Conference)

14 November

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The group has had major successes in assisting with negotiations for Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Symantec, VMWare and many other licences. These negotiations have resulted in lower bulk pricing, improved licensing conditions and a larger range of products offered (Adobe, VMWare), and developing improved site licence terms and conditions which help reduce costs for CAUDIT members. (SPSS, MatLab).

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There are also non-cost saving advantages achieved by USLC that include successfully implementing processes used by other members and developing new ideas into practices through investigating whole of group requirements, reducing the demographic impact to non capital city universities by providing group access to resources, discussions and presentations therefore benefiting all eligible CAUDIT members and providing the ability to simplify negotiations and modify agreements to suit higher education needs.

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There are members and contributors from across Australia and New Zealand. The group is organised via a 6 member executive.