Licensing summary

This page summarises the commercial model we intend for KeystoneIT. It is a summary. It is not the software licence agreement, and nothing on it is an offer.

No licence agreement has been published yet. When there is one, it will be the binding document and will form part of an order. If this page and the agreement differ, the agreement is what counts.

KeystoneIT is in development and has not been released. A licence cannot be ordered yet.

The rules are published as the KeystoneIT UK Education Commercial Rules. The price list and the rules are on the pricing page, and a quote states the rules it was issued under. Tier prices are not repeated here, so that they are stated in one place only.

A perpetual licence

The KeystoneIT licence is perpetual. A perpetual licence does not expire.

Four things are separate, and it helps to keep them apart:

• The licence. Your right to use the software. It is perpetual.
• Capacity. A licence is for a named organisation and a number of counted schools.
• Maintenance. Updates to the software and, with a paid licence, support. A paid licence includes it for the first year, and it is optional after that.
• Hosting. Where the software runs. You can run it yourself. Keystone Managed, which is planned, would be a separate and optional service.

The licence is priced by the number of counted schools. Keystone does not charge per technician, per requester or per ticket. Users, agents and tickets are unlimited within the licensed organisation.

Every Keystone product runs on the same shared Platform. It comes with every product.

Who a licence covers

A licence covers a whole organisation: a school standing alone, an academy trust, a federation, or another single organisation that runs its schools.

Trust licensing normally covers the whole Trust: the complete legal Trust, not a selection of its academies. A quote for part of a Trust or part of a federation is still produced, and it is flagged for us to review with you. There is no self-service licence for part of a Trust.

For a federation or another group, the schools must belong to one organisation that buys for them and runs them. Schools that are not related do not become one organisation by being chosen together. Where the school register does not show that the schools you chose are one organisation, the quote says: “We can calculate an indicative price, but we’ll confirm the organisation relationship before issuing a licence.”

Counted schools and the Micro licence

These rules turn on whether a school has fewer than 100 pupils. A school with exactly 100 pupils does not.

Three kinds of small organisation qualify for a £0 perpetual KeystoneIT licence. Together we call it the Micro licence.

• Micro School. One school standing alone, in no trust and no federation, with fewer than 100 pupils.
• Micro MAT. An academy trust of no more than 3 schools, each with fewer than 100 pupils.
• Micro Group. A federation, or another single organisation that runs its schools, of no more than 3 schools, each with fewer than 100 pupils.

In a larger organisation, the first 3 schools with fewer than 100 pupils each are left out of the count. This is the Micro School allowance. Every further school counts, including any further school with fewer than 100 pupils.

A £0 licence is for the full product.

The pupil number we use is the latest figure that the Department for Education’s school register publishes for the school, with its date. A school is marked “Needs confirmation”, and counts until it is confirmed, only where the register gives no figure or no date for it, or there is a particular reason to doubt the figure, such as a figure you have queried or an old figure close to 100. An old figure close to 100 is one more than 2 years old that lies from 89 to 110 pupils. An older figure outside that range is used as it stands.

We confirm that an organisation qualifies, and how its schools are related, before a licence is issued. The register does not record who owns an independent or non-maintained school. A quote for one standing alone with fewer than 100 pupils therefore shows the Micro School price and is flagged for us to confirm who owns the school and that it is eligible as a school standing alone.

Maintenance

A paid KeystoneIT licence includes the first 12 months of software maintenance, from the agreed licence start or purchase date.

After that, maintenance is optional. It costs 20% of the licence value a year.

For a paid licence, maintenance provides feature releases, standard support and the supported upgrade path. The full definition will be in the maintenance terms.

Keystone does not stop working because maintenance is not renewed. You keep your licensed software and your data, and no subscription starts.

What a Micro licence includes

Micro organisations receive the software and software maintenance at no charge. Commercial support and Keystone Managed are optional paid services.

A Micro licence is the perpetual KeystoneIT licence for the full product. For a Micro licence, software maintenance is £0 for as long as the organisation still qualifies. It covers eligible product updates for supported release lines and the supported upgrade path for the licence. High and Critical security fixes for supported release lines are available to a Micro licence as they are to any other.

A Micro licence does not include commercial support, managed hosting, bespoke onboarding, priority support or consultancy. Commercial support is an optional paid service, and so is Keystone Managed, which is planned and is not available yet. No prices are published for them.

Security fixes

High and Critical security fixes remain available for supported release lines even when software maintenance has lapsed.

That is about release lines we still support. It is not a promise to go on supporting an old release. This page does not define how severity is assessed or how long a release line is supported.

If your organisation grows

Growth is handled as an uplift in capacity. An organisation that moves into a higher tier pays the difference between the current list price of the tier it has and the current list price of the tier it moves to. The sum is not worked out from the amount it originally paid, and it does not buy Keystone again.

A licence for one tier does not become a licence for a larger tier without that uplift.

We will not switch off your service desk because your organisation has grown.

If an organisation with a Micro licence no longer qualifies for it, the same uplift rule applies.

Quotes

A quote from the licence builder is for planning and budgeting. It is not an order, and we will tell you when ordering opens.

A quote is valid for 30 days from its date. It records the rules it was worked out under, by name and identifier, and the date of the school register extract it used. It is never recalculated.

Where it runs

Your licence includes the right to run Keystone on your own infrastructure. Keystone is being designed for managed and self-hosted deployment. Supported self-hosting platforms will be published as qualification completes.

Keystone Managed will be an optional recurring hosting and operations service. It is planned and is not available yet. The software licence remains perpetual whether or not you use it. It is intended to include software maintenance, so a Keystone Managed customer would not also pay the optional maintenance charge. Its price is not published.

You can move from managed to self-hosted, or the other way, without buying the software again.

Source code

The licence is intended to include source-code continuity rights. The terms are being written; nothing here is a legal promise.

Where things stand

KeystoneIT is in development. An evaluation build is in independent engineering review. That review is a control within our own engineering, carried out independently of the author of the work. It is not an external assurance certification.