Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Check this site out:  https://epp.microsoft.com/

If you don’t know what this is, it might be interesting to do some digging.  It’s the Microsoft employee  purchase program web site where you, as an employee of a corporate customer of Microsoft’s that has an Enterprise Agreement, can get drastically discounted productivity software for your own personal use.  It’s one of those cool perks of being a major customer of ours.

So you’re reading through the site and you look at one field:  "PROGRAM CODE".  And you say, "What’s a Program Code?"  That’s the unique ID that’s tied to your company.  It’s a special code that gives you the opportunity to enroll in the EPP program under your company’s contract.

This of course means that someone either has to enroll you using the code, or they have to GIVE you the code.  Personally, I’ve seen customers do either however I think the best way it for some central person within your company enroll you and everyone else just to make sure there’s some control over who takes advantage of this benefit… because ABUSE of the site (buying software at a discount an reselling it on eBay for example) makes your company liable for your actions.  The simplest penalty is to have the benefit negated completely for the life of the contract.

You can probably imagine how ticked off a lot of people would be if this happened.

So anyway, if your’re a customer of mine, your organization HAS THIS BENEFIT.  It’s just a matter of them making it available to you.  I suggest you ask around because with Windows Vista and Office 2007 coming around the corner, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to pick up a copy for home for half price?