Issue details

The report recommends approving the procurement strategy for the procurement of the Council’s Microsoft Enterprise Licencing Agreement, Microsoft Azure Cloud Services and Microsoft Unified Support contract.

The contract with the incumbent supplier ends in June 2025 and does not allow any further extensions.

The provision of a Microsoft Enterprise Subscription will allow the Council to obtain licences for the use of Microsoft software which will enable it to continue to benefit from the Office 365 suite of productivity, collaboration and communication tools such as Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. It is also vital to the council as it enables the Council to administer back-office functions and the licences are required to transform the ICT estate enabling efficiencies from the application of new technology.

The provision of Microsoft Azure Cloud Services will provide continuity for cloud computing. Majority of the council systems sit on and rely on Microsoft Azure therefore, if there is a risk of the subscription being terminated or paused preventing access to council IT systems, this will result in an inability for the council to function effectively if this is not retendered.

Failure to renew these agreements will result in critical software and systems becoming inoperable. With the current climate of working from home, this could result in more support requirements from our outsourced IT support provider, involving additional costs.