If you ’re an IT director worry about how Lion ’s Mac App Store - only distribution will bear on your deployment of the novel OS , perhaps some prescribed instructions from Apple will alleviate your fears . On Friday , the ship’s company posted a PDF to its sales event website   detail just how business and education client can upgrade come July .

First reported onby TUAW , the document offers a basic overview for upgrading to Lion in regard to line of work and education , as well as confirmation regarding newly purchased Macs being eligible for a free OS upgrade . The PDF is available only to clear vendee on Apple ’s sales website , thoughMacRumors has posted a copyto its server .   We ’ve asked Apple to confirm the detail of the document ; we ’ll update with Apple ’s response if the company elect to gloss .

For those of you who do n’t feel like reading over the PDF , we ’ve broken down the information for you in a few simple step .

Buying Lion

Business client : According to the text file , business customers will be able-bodied to purchase Lion and Lion Server through the onlineBusiness Storeor by calling Apple ’s business sector parentage . Buyers will be able to purchase volume license for $ 30 a license ( minimum 20 licenses).Maintenance contracts , which offer three free subsequent years of OS updates as part of Apple ’s Maintenance Program , will cost $ 50 a license ( minimal 20 license ) . Lion Server will be available for an additional $ 50 from the Mac App Store ; if you ’re currently run Snow Leopard Server , you ’ll have to buy both Lion and Lion Server at the same prison term to upgrade .

Education customers : Those corrupt Lion for a school can upgrade through their Apple Education Account Representative or through Apple ’s onlineEducation Store . Lion will be automatically bundled with iLife and iWork as part of the ship’s company ’s Apple Software Collection , which starts at $ 39 per licence ( minimum 25 permit ) .

Downloading and Dissemination

download Lion : patronage or education customers that buy the requisite permit will receive a single buyback code for use on the Mac App Store . Once redeem , this code will download the Lion installer ; from there , you’re able to copy the installer to a disk , trice drive , networked driveway — you name it — to transfer it over to another organisation .

Installing Lion : you’re able to go about really installing Lion a duet of unlike ways : by dragging the installer to the computer in question and take it establish in plaza , or — if you ’re running Lion Server — by using NetInstall to make the Lion installer a startup disk on your company ’s local net . ( If your business enterprise has a copy of Apple Remote Desktop , you may use that to automate system installation , as well . )

But what about updates?you’re able to download updates for both Lion and Lion Server through Software Update on each several calculator ; no Mac App Store spell - download necessary .

Questions and answers

In its announcement that the Mac App Store would be the exclusive elbow room to promote to Lion , Apple raised several concerns among consumer and IT professionals likewise ; if this document is any meter reading , however , it calculate like the caller is beginning to address these issues . That being say , Apple has yet to discuss upgrade paths for other type of customer — namely , hoi polloi with limited bandwidth or a data - capped Internet link , who might run into problem download large file cabinet from the Mac App Store . Also left out in the cold : Mac users who have n’t upgraded to Snow Leopard , as you need to be running Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later on to use the Mac App Store . We hope to get more details on those result from Apple in advance of Lion ’s July reaching .