PROVINCIAL LICENSING AND PURCHASING
The Microsoft Education Select Agreement offers schools, post-secondary institutions, public libraries, museums and other qualified institutions the opportunity to buy software licences. Microsoft products are available in different languages. Microsoft Select Agreement renewal documentation is required to continue purchasing Microsoft licensing and software. For more information, please contact us.
Surface Devices for Manitoba Education
MERLIN negotiated with Microsoft and their appointed vendor to offer cost savings to the education community on Surface devices effective June 2019. These devices include Surface Go, Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2 and the Surface Book 2.
Microsoft K–12 Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES)
The Microsoft Enrollment for Education Services (EES) (three-year) Agreement for Manitoba K-12 education and First Nations schools was renewed July 1st, 2019.
Microsoft Enrollment for Education Solutions for post-secondary institutions
MERLIN also negotiated a three-year Enrollment for Education Solutions Agreement (EES) for all post-secondary institutions in Manitoba which is expiring at the end of March 2020. MERLIN is currently in the process of renegotiating a new three-year agreement.
Cumulative Licensing Program or CLP
MERLIN is in a province-wide agreement with Adobe called the Cumulative Licensing Program or CLP. This provides all Manitoba schools with special pricing on owned Adobe software licenses. Schools are required to sign the Adobe Indemnity Agreement before placing orders for Adobe products. To obtain a copy of the Adobe Indemnity Agreement, or for more information, please contact MERLIN.
Please note – all orders may be subject to a shipping and handling charge. Due to fluctuations in the US dollar, it has been difficult for MERLIN to maintain an accurate price list and cannot guarantee the pricing to be correct at the time of your order.
Purchase orders should be forwarded to MERLIN at: 100 – 135 Innovation Drive, Winnipeg, MB R3T 6A8 or emailed to licensing@merlin.mb.ca.
Trimble SketchUp Pro
MERLIN continues to be a facilitator of the Trimble SketchUp Pro K-12 State-Wide License Grant Program providing all public K-12 schools with access to the latest versions at no cost. This software allows you to create 3D models of anything you like.
Teachers are using it on many grade levels and in many subject areas from computer technology to math, geography and science.
Contact licensing@merlin.mb.ca to obtain your license keys.
CONSULTING
This service includes per diem consulting, project consulting and support contracts.
CONSULTING
This service includes per diem consulting, project consulting and support contracts.
HOSTING
MERLIN’s hosting services include the following listed below:
MERLIN hosts a variety of software applications for the education community.
This service offers the following benefits:
- Provides each school division access to a virtual instance of the firewall platform;
- Ability to manage your own rules and reporting;
- Ability to integrate into your own directory;
- No capital cost required;
- Annual subscription includes support, threat prevention, content filtering, spyware protection.
MERLIN manages a Microsoft SharePoint infrastructure which can be used by school staff for collaboration, document management, forms, announcements, calendars and many other features.
This service remotely backs-up server data to MERLIN’s Data Centre.
This electronic mail discussion list gives each list a unique web page and allows users to subscribe, unsubscribe and change their account options using a web interface.
MERLIN manages a shared Microsoft Exchange infrastructure to provide school staff with the full features of Exchange, including email, shared calendar and contacts.
The desktop Outlook client, browser-based Outlook, and most smartphone are supported.
MERLIN provides educational institutions with hosted virtual infrastructure services including virtual servers, and backup storage. Principal benefits include cost efficiencies on both infrastructure and licensing, as well as redundancy and fault tolerance.
MERLIN provides Internet domain hosting services, e.g. “schooldivision.ca”. This service does not include domain name registration.
A complete list of registrars can be found on CIRA’s website.
SECURITY
“Spam” is electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings or is more generally known as any unsolicited email. In addition to wasting people’s time with unwanted email, spam also consumes large amounts of network bandwidth.
MERLIN’s spam/virus filter is an integrated software solution for complete protection of your email server. MERLIN’s filter is compatible with all email servers and regularly processes 3 million messages a day.
MERLIN’s anti-virus solution scans incoming email for malicious software or malware. This includes viruses, Trojans, key loggers, dialers, and other code that vandalizes or steals a computer’s contents.
MERLIN ingests threat intelligence from 46 unique sources, collecting over 3 million indicators of compromise (IoCs). These IP addresses, URLs and domain names are used by MERLIN’s Next Gen Firewall and DNS servers to block malicious traffic going to and from MERLIN’s clients before any data can be exchanged. On a typical day, more than 200 million malicious connections are blocked, all done transparently without requiring any effort by MERLIN clients.
Web content filtering can prevent computer users from viewing inappropriate websites or content and prevent access to known malware hosts. Web traffic is compared against the URL filtering database which contains a listing of millions of websites that have been categorized into approximately 60-80 categories. Clients can customize URL profiles and add lists of specific websites that should always be blocked or allowed for more granular control over URL categories. For example, a school may want to block social-networking sites but allow some websites that are part of the social-networking category. Objectionable search engine results can be reduced by enforcing safe search settings in users’ browsers.
Benefits of local administration:
- School or division administrators can be delegated to edit profiles by allowing or denying access to certain websites, IPs, or entire categories either temporarily or permanently.
- Administrators can also create their own lists for both blocked sites (“blacklist”) and allowed sites (“white list”). Administrators can run their own reports or request reports from MERLIN.
Denial-of-service and/or distributed denial-of-service (collectively, DDoS) attacks are on the rise and have evolved into complex and overwhelming security challenges for organizations large and small. Although DoS attacks are not a recent phenomenon, the methods and resources available to conduct and mask such attacks have dramatically evolved and have become much easier to access and use.
MERLIN’s advanced Denial-of-Service protection matches the sophistication and scale of such threats and can be used to automatically or semi-automatically mitigate these attacks of all forms.
MERLIN uses the market-leading Next Generation Firewall. The Next Generation Firewall is positioned in-line between MERLIN partners and the upstream Internet service providers.
Traffic is inspected as it passes through the device, which determines whether it is legitimate or malicious. Potentially harmful traffic is blocked and is unable to reach its intended target.
Spyware is any software that aids in gathering information about a person or organization through the user’s Internet connection without their knowledge or permission. This spyware is usually used to relay the information to advertisers or other interested parties. Spyware will keep track of websites and may log your keystrokes to determine passwords and login information. This would allow malicious actor to take over some of the operations of your computer.
MERLIN’s spyware filter is an integrated anti-spyware gateway solution that works to block spyware from getting into your organization. It combines preventative, reactive, and proactive measures to form a complete anti-spyware solution.
Here’s what MERLIN’s spyware filter can do for your school division:
- Stops spyware downloads (including drive-by downloads)
- Blocks spyware downloads
- Blocks exploitation of application and website vulnerabilities
- Detects and blocks spyware access to the Internet
ACCESS TO HIGH-SPEED INTERNET SERVICES
Connectivity
MRnet and CANARIE
Internet Weather Map
IPv6 at MERLIN
Monitoring/reporting of Internet traffic
PARTNER PROGRAMS
What are the Partner Programs about?
The MERLIN Partner Programs include a collection of commonly used technology services that translates into major cost savings for schools and post-secondary institutions in Manitoba. This is a unique opportunity for the education sector to work collaboratively with MERLIN to facilitate technology solutions common to all.
There are two Partner Program Agreements:
- K-12 schools and
- Post-secondary institutions
What are the benefits?
The Partner Programs includes tangible benefits that provides savings on software, content filtering, Internet and other features. Additional savings are also realized through:
- Compliancy
- Best practices
- Consistency of application
- Simplicity in reporting systems
- Long-term technical and financial planning
- Over the long term, the Partner Programs will take advantage of the economies of scale and offers a unique opportunity for Manitoba school divisions and post-secondary institutions to respond to new and emerging technologies into the future while allowing them to work within existing financial limitations.
Participation
100% of Manitoba school divisions currently participate in the K-12 Partner Program. MERLIN’s K-12 Partner Program three-year Agreement was renewed on July 1st, 2019.
The Agency has renegotiated the Partner Program three-year Agreement for post-secondary institutions effective April 1st, 2020.
PARTNER PROGRAMS
What are the Partner Programs about?
The MERLIN Partner Programs include a collection of commonly used technology services that translates into major cost savings for schools and post-secondary institutions in Manitoba. This is a unique opportunity for the education sector to work collaboratively with MERLIN to facilitate technology solutions common to all.
There are two Partner Program Agreements:
- K-12 schools and
- Post-secondary institutions
What are the benefits?
The Partner Programs includes tangible benefits that provides savings on software, content filtering, Internet and other features. Additional savings are also realized through:
- Compliancy
- Best practices
- Consistency of application
- Simplicity in reporting systems
- Long-term technical and financial planning
- Over the long term, the Partner Programs will take advantage of the economies of scale and offers a unique opportunity for Manitoba school divisions and post-secondary institutions to respond to new and emerging technologies into the future while allowing them to work within existing financial limitations.
Participation
100% of Manitoba school divisions currently participate in the K-12 Partner Program. MERLIN’s K-12 Partner Program three-year Agreement was renewed on July 1st, 2019.
The Agency has renegotiated the Partner Program three-year Agreement for post-secondary institutions effective April 1st, 2020.