The MSDN Academic Alliance is an annual membership program for technical departments in the area of Computer Science, Engineering, and Information Systems. As a member, a department receives an MSDN AA subscription that includes Microsoft platform, servers, and developer tools software. This software may be installed on any number of departmental lab machines. The software must be used for instructional and research purposes; it may not be used to run the infrastructure of the department. In addition, the departments faculty and students may check-out or download the software to install on their personal computers.