Ipswitch has become the latest networking vendor to throw its weight behind the education sector by introducing aggressive discounts for colleges and universities.

The vendor is offering a 10 per cent discount to higher education institutions purchasing its software monitoring product, WhatsUp Gold.

The move is in anticipation of the return of millions of students bringing along more computers and peripherals into their places of study than every before, Ipswitch said.

December 2007 saw networking vendor 3com offer resellers targeting government and education accounts an extra 6 per cent discount. Likewise, in June, rival ZyXEL urged its channel to cash in on growing opportunities in the education sector by formalising its Education Partner Programme.

Mike Silva, regional sales manager for the Network Management Division at Ipswitch, said: “WhatsUp Gold offers network managers at schools an affordable, powerful tool.

“They can use WhatsUp’s flexibility to add new network management capabilities for less than renewing the service agreements on their huge, complicated incumbent enterprise management platforms.”

Ipswitch’s WhatsUp Gold examines critical network services, devices and applications.