What is the MSDN Academic Alliance?

Through the MSDN Academic Alliance subscription, SEAS students and researchers can get free installations of a limited set of Microsoft software. This includes Visual Studio, Visio, and Microsoft operating systems. It also includes various servers and driver development kits from Microsoft. Microsoft Office is not available via MSDNAA, although some applications like Project and Visio are available.

This software can be used for instruction or research in Engineering. It cannot be used for commercial use or for university infrastructure or administration. The servers cannot be used for ongoing activities such as Exchange server for e-mail or Commerce Server for e-commerce applications.

It can be installed on university-owned or student-owned machines. The licenses are perpetual and the usage restrictions are also perpetual.

The license includes beta software, typically operating systems; however, CETS has decided not to distribute beta operating system software for purposes other than research on operating systems.

Software available under the subscription typically runs later than initial Microsoft public distributions. Expect a lag time of a month or two until new software is available via the Penn MSDN license.

If a particular piece of software included under the MSDNAA program is needed for an Engineering research project or for an Engineering course, please contact cets@seas.

To get software for a SEAS course

The faculty or TA should send the e-mail to cets@seas with the course name/number and the software needed

Please visit the MSDN Academic Alliance Information page for more information.