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Distributor Synnex has teamed up with the Ministry of Education and Google to provide partners with software licences for Kiwi schools.
The move comes after the Ministry of Education (MoE) renewed its Chrome Education Upgrade programme arrangement with Google, with the ministry committing to fund Google Workspace for Education Plus licences for another three years.
The renewal follows on from the initial Chrome Education Upgrade programme funded by the MoE in 2018, with licences dealt out under the renewed deal to be available to schools via Synnex resellers.
“The Ministry of Education is pleased to be able to renew and extend its existing agreement with Google through to 30 June 2024, covering Chrome Education Upgrade and Google Workspace for Education Plus for all state and state-integrated schools and kura in New Zealand,” said Stuart Wakefield, the Ministry of Education’s chief digital officer.
"The addition of Google Workspace for Education to the agreement supports the rapidly growing use of online learning platforms accelerated by COVID lockdowns and provides us with the benefit of advanced features in areas of security, integration and collaboration,” he added.
The Google Workspace for Education Plus edition includes all of the enhanced security features and tools from the Education Standard offering, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and more, according to Synnex.
The arrangement will see all state and state integrated schools provided with government-funded Chrome Education Upgrade and Google Workspace for Education Plus licences.
Channel partners will have the opportunity to build out their offerings by bundling their professional services with the funded licences, effectively being able to procure the licences from Synnex, free of charge, for eligible schools and receive a commission for each licence deployed.
Synnex, which claims an exclusive partnership under the deal, will offer additional support to help partners take a wide range of education and enablement programmes to the schools. The distributor will also help to ensure qualifying schools have the opportunity to understand the benefits the programme brings.
“Synnex is extremely excited to be working with the Ministry of Education and Google on such an important project for the future of New Zealand’s schools,” said Johnson Ko, Synnex New Zealand sales and marketing manager.
“Bringing collaboration and productivity tools such as Google Workspace for Education into the hands of teachers and students will help accelerate the transformation from pure physical collaboration in classrooms, to online collaboration, as New Zealanders continue to respond to the pandemic,” he added.
Just days ago, Microsoft revealed it was bringing an additional focus on cyber security to the three-year renewal of its pre-existing agreement with the MoE to provide the country’s schools with its software and services.
The renewed agreement will provide all state and state-integrated schools with free A3 licences for core Microsoft software such as Microsoft 365, including Teams, OneNote, Forms and other applications, along with Minecraft: Education Edition, and Windows 10 and above.
Additionally, schools that have already adopted cloud security and protection technologies can apply for fully-funded A5 licences, which provide more intensive security management and advanced compliance on all school-owned devices, with additional analytics tools – the latter through Power BI.
