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.

THAT

a)      the funding available is noted; and

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

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.

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.