[HLUG] hereford councils contract with microsoft up for renewal

[Sarah Chard]

I wonder what comments/thoughts other HLUG members have about the
following which I have just read on the Herefordshire council website
relating to the decision made in april 2008 to renew the councils
contract with microsoft
http://councillors.herefordshire.gov.uk/iedecisiondetails.aspx?id=1609&j=1&zts=undefined


the contract is up for renewal in april 2011 so they must already be
discussing whether or not they should renew it - it seems to have been
rubber stamped in 2008 - 
the relevant wording from the council's 2008 decision is below - perhaps
we should be offering the council an alternative viewpoint before they
make their 2011 decision and spend all that money?

Purpose:
To agree the renewal of the current Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
licence, support and maintenance contract covering all corporate
(excluding schools, education and research) Microsoft computer software
in use within the authority for a period of three years.

Decision:
THAT

a)      the funding available is noted; and

b)     the contract is renewed in the sum of £645,000 over the three
year period.

Reasons for the decision:
To ensure that all corporate Microsoft software is covered in terms of
support, maintenance and licence compliance for a period of three years
and to ensure that the Council continues to receive the associated forty
percent discount for new Microsoft software.

Alternative options considered:
1.      There are no realistic alternative options in terms of supplier.
The majority of partners, local Councils, Central Government
departments, NHS agencies and businesses use Microsoft software.

2.      To switch to another supplier would be problematic at best as
the majority of business applications within the Council only work on
and with Microsoft operating systems and Office software. They would,
therefore, become unworkable, necessitating their replacement. In short,
the Council are locked into this supplier as are all other organisations
who predominantly use Microsoft software on such a scale.

3.      Microsoft software costs are seen as a “cost of doing business”
by most organisations as there is no real alternative supplier that
provides the same breadth of software to the same high quality and most
importantly, to the same level of usability for staff and engineers.[1]

4.      The authority could choose not to renew the Enterprise
Agreement. However, this means the Council will lose out on the benefits
of having an organisation-wide agreement and face a much larger cost
when rolling out projects that require desktops or servers or when
purchasing Microsoft products. When Microsoft upgrades its current line
of products the Council would not be able to upgrade them and would have
to buy the new version at full price. At over 2000 desktop users and
over 100 servers this would be at a much higher cost (40% extra per unit
of Microsoft software). Additional staff resource would be required to
provide licence compliance support.



________________________________________________________________________
[1] The only alternative to Microsoft software is open source software.
This is provided by many different companies. Whilst appearing to be
free, the total cost of ownership is similar if not slightly higher than
when using Microsoft software on such an organisation-wide scale. The
majority of the business applications in use do not work on this
platform so most of the other software in use across the Council would
need to be replaced as well as the core desktop and server software.
Full retraining of all staff and technical engineers would need to take
place and further integration with the Primary Care Trust who use
Microsoft software would be made more difficult and costly.


Publication Date: 11/04/2008

Date of Decision: 10/04/2008

Effective from: 17/04/2008



-- 
Sarah