Mersive Technologies announced a new way for the education industry to acquire its Solstice collaboration solution that accommodates the typical education “use-it-or-lose-it” budget model.

For educational institutions only, the Solstice Pod for Education is available for purchase outright without the need for a subscription as of the Solstice 6 release. The base Solstice Pod for Education comes with all of the Solstice Pod core features and software updates, plus support for the lifetime of the Pod. An introductory version of Solstice Cloud is also included with upgrade options available for analytics and monitoring.

Additional features for Solstice Pods for Education are available à la carte for a one-time fee, such as Solstice Active Learning and Solstice Conference. Solstice Active Learning is a feature that allows instructors to drag and drop video feeds among multiple displays. At the same time, Solstice Conferencing claims to make learning spaces interoperable with all major conferencing platforms by wirelessly connecting conferencing services on users’ laptops. Solstice Pod for Education will be sold directly through Mersive’s certified channel partner network.