Back in 2010, Apple debuted a volume purchase program for its iOS App Store, designed to allow educational institutions and businesses to purchase iOS apps in bulk. With Mavericks, the company is planning to expand its purchase program to the Mac App Store.
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The App Store Volume Purchase Program now offers institutions the ability to assign apps to users while keeping full ownership and control over app licenses. Institutions purchase app licenses through the VPP website, and can use their MDM solution to assign apps to students, faculty, and staff over the air. Students can enroll with their personal Apple IDs without providing it to their institution, and apps are placed in their purchase history for self-service download, or are installed automatically via MDM. Apps can be revoked at any time and reassigned to other students. In addition to iOS apps, VPP now also supports the purchase of Mac apps and even books, so students can be provided all the tools they need to get their work done.
As the release of Mavericks approaches, Apple sent an email to Mac developers (via 9to5Mac) with instructions on how to prep for the upcoming launch of Mac App Store volume purchases.
We’re pleased to announce that Mac apps will soon be eligible to participate in the Volume Purchase Program for Business and Education. The Volume Purchase Program allows businesses or educational institutions to purchase multiple copies of your app at once.
You may also offer a discount to educational institutions for multiple purchases. If you choose to offer a volume discount for an app, institutions that purchase 20 or more copies of that app in a single order will receive a 50-percent discount.
Your existing Mac apps will not be automatically enrolled in the discount for educational institutions. If you would like to offer your existing Mac apps at a discount for the Educational Volume Purchase Program, check “Discount for Educational Institutions” in the Rights and Pricing section of the Manage Your Apps module on iTunes Connect.
Under the terms of the program, Mac developers will be able to implement educational discounts to bulk app purchases in iTunes Connect, allowing institutions that purchase 20 or more copies of an app to get a 50 percent discount. Previously, bulk purchases of Mac apps were not available, with the exception of Apple’s own apps.
OS X 10.9 Mavericks is expected to launch at the end of October and includes a number of other features for education and enterprise users, including single sign on, Caching Server 2, and new MDM configuration options.
Top Rated Comments
Taking 30% of something that sells for half as much is 50% less.
I'm not a user of any Apple products, Android on the mobile side, Windows/Linux/BSD server side and Windows on client side, but I generally keep up with the news posted here and on other Mac sites.
I actually registered an account to respond to this argument as I think you are missing the enterprise aspect of it.
The likes of VPP through App Store is something all larger enterprises with central management has been asking for during an extended period. The reason is mainly not to cut costs on the purchase price, even though this is one of the main reason why you purchase in bulk volumes or enterprise licensing agreements, as the App Store is not aimed at all towards enterprise users.
It requires an Apple ID to purchase the software, an ID which can be connected to 5 >physical< machines, which needs to be connected to a credit card. What do you do if you have 500 devices requiring your software? Register 500 accounts and purchase the app 500 times?
I have not looked in to the actual details of the VPP yet but the possibility of configuring a machine with a generic corporate Apple ID is something which would be very beneficial.
Of course, when you have this large amount of devices the management is handled by other 3rd party apps such as FileWave, Puppet, OSCAR etc to manage both image installs, license inventory and app installs but just the actual time and hassle of purchasing a standalone installer of Final Cut X is mindblowing. Here in Sweden, the ONLY way of purchasing the app was through App Store.
I like the architecture behind OSX, just don't get along with the GUI at all. For Apple to get a sustaining share of the enterprise market they need to do what Microsoft has done historically, please the enterprise market with management tools and not be 100% user centric.
Knowing some people who work only with OSX-desktop deployment environments I know this would be god send. :)
I'm confident that many companies and a lot! of educational institutions had neglected the Mac App Store because of this.
Already enrolled. It's a good thing.