Likewise, which specializes in helping businesses and educational institutions manage IT environments with mixed operating systems, has announced a program that enables educational institutions of all sizes to take advantage of reduced pricing and cross-platform expertise to better track, authenticate and secure Mac, Linux and Unix systems. It will be demoed at this week’s Macworld Conference & Expo.
 
The competitive pricing of Likewise Enterprise for Education, along with volume discounts, helps universities and school districts achieve significant cost savings, says Arne Gallagher, director of worldwide education sales at Likewise. Also, Likewise Open, an open source and free product, can integrate small groups of computers using Microsoft Active Directory. No additional hardware is required to set up Likewise, so schools don’t need to worry about additional budget for servers.
 
Johns Hopkins University, a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, was among the first to take advantage of the new program. Johns Hopkins chose site license pricing, which allows it to use Likewise Enterprise across the entire university.
 
Special subscription-bsed pricing in Likewise Enterprise for Education starts at US$19 per workstation per year.  Program details are available at http://www.likewise.com/education.