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Merit Network announces Consolidated Pricing for MeritLicensing – VMware Program

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December 23, 2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Merit Network, Inc. announced today a new consolidated pricing model for their MeritLicensing – VMware Program. Effective December 20, 2010, state and local government organizations are eligible to receive increased cost-savings in addition to the already reduced rate to purchase VMware licenses through the MeritLicensing Program.

In April 2010, Merit reached an agreement with VMware to license its industry-leading suite of state-of-the-art virtualization software and technological support services. The agreement allows Merit to offer unlimited licenses for VMware virtualization software and technology support at significantly discounted pricing, currently unavailable from commercial distributers.

The new consolidated pricing model offers government-sector Members the same discounted pricing as Merit Members that are higher education organizations, K-12 intermediate school districts, libraries, and medical-teaching health care institutions.

“By utilizing a single price, we are bringing the pricing model in line with all other Merit services,” said Leslie Williamson, director of services and product development for Merit Network. “The new price enables Merit to offer the best value for VMware licenses to state and local government organizations.”

“Since the new consolidated pricing went into effect, our current government Members have seen a 28 to 30% reduction in their VMware licensing rates,” she added. “We expect that the new cost-savings will increase the growing number of government organizations who take advantage of virtualization through our VMware Licensing program.”

“We are pleased to offer the MeritLicensing Program and all the value it adds to Merit Membership,” said Elwood Downing, vice president of member relations, communications and services for Merit Network.

“A MeritLicensing – VMware License takes advantage of revolutionary software from an industry leader and delivers real savings in infrastructure costs, ongoing maintenance and reduced energy consumption,” he said. “And through Merit, Members pay significantly less than they would through another provider. Now our government Members will see the same discounts as the rest of our educational Membership.”

“MeritLicensing is not limited to VMware. It also enables Members to take advantage of similar savings through our Zimbra Licensing Program,” Downing added. “The Zimbra email suite provides advanced functionality and dynamic features for email, calendaring, messaging, and document sharing. It’s a collaboration catalyst.”

About Merit Network

Merit Network Inc., is a nonprofit corporation owned and governed by Michigan’s public universities. Merit owns and operates America’s longest-running regional research and education network. In 1966, Michigan’s public universities created Merit as a shared resource to help meet their common need for networking assistance. Since its formation, Merit Network has remained at the forefront of research and education networking expertise and services. Merit provides high-performance networking and IT solutions to Michigan’s public universities, colleges, K-12 organizations, libraries, state government, healthcare, and other non-profit organizations.

For more information: www.merit.edu

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