UK pensions dept hands Softcat £250M for Microsoft subscriptions
- Reference: 1681904655
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/04/19/dwp_collars_softcat_for_250m/
- Source link:
[1]Announced earlier this week , the contract is set to provide a licensing subscription service for Microsoft, or equivalent, products and incorporates a number of product suites used by the DWP, including Office 365, Windows and Server products.
The five-year deal is set to come to an end on 31 March 2028. It is a call-off from a framework agreement designed to drive up volume with selected suppliers in return for greater value for money for the public purse.
[2]
It was let by the Crown Commercial Service, the procurement wing of the Cabinet Office, under the reference number RM6068 for the provision of Technology Products and Associated Services. The framework agreement was valued at up to £6.5 billion ($8.09 billion) over four years when [3]the contract was launched in 2019 .
[4]
The period within which public sector buyers can contract under the framework ends in December 2023. The government has already begun the procurement for Technology Products and Associated Services 2, a framework set to be dubbed RM6098, which could be worth up to £12 billion ($14.9 billion), according to a [5]contract notice published in March .
The [6]DWP came under fire in May of last year when Rishi Sunak — finance minister at the time — blamed legacy IT for his decision not to increase social security payments as inflation hit the highest rate in 30 years.
[7]You might want to consider the cost of not upgrading legacy tech, UK's Department for Work and Pensions told
[8]Fujitsu bags £142M UK government work since Horizon probe announced
[9]NHS England considered using Palantir tech to manage strike disruption
[10]Tiny Brit tech firms win spots on £1.84B public sector contract. Kidding, it's the usual suspects
According to reports, the Conservative politician who became prime minister last autumn was prevented from raising some benefits because of ageing back office systems at the Whitehall department, which has overall responsibility for social security. A government source said: "The system was simply not built to be flexible."
In January 2022, [11]MPs told the DWP it should factor in the cost of not upgrading a 34-year-old legacy system when reviewing tech investments. The damning conclusion followed a National Audit Office report which found that a legacy ICL-era mainframe was one of the causes behind the failure to pay more than £1bn in state pensions. ®
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[1] https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/56f5b1d9-e932-4b77-88b3-4791ec153d8f
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZEAQJWBJMHVlUwbMP0qMrgAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://ted.europa.eu/TED/notice/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:196685-2019:TEXT:EN:HTML
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZEAQJWBJMHVlUwbMP0qMrgAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/2ef4d8c5-dcca-4159-ba12-eae599f42e1e
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/legacy_it_benefits_delay/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/21/dwp_1bn_pension_shortfall/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/18/fujitsu_gets_142_million_uk/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/nhs_england_palantir_tech_optout/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/12/uk_public_sector_framework_deal/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/21/dwp_1bn_pension_shortfall/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Some vendors don't like you buying direct and insist you buy via a reseller.
I don't spend quite as much as DWP on Microsoft, but I'm still in seven figures and Microsoft point blank refuse to talk to me about anything involing licensing. Every licensing question results in the same answer: Speak to your reseller.
The Frameworks have the resellers compete for the best discounts on a base price and "added value" - so that competition keeps procurement teams happy I guess. Resellers gain as (expensive) foot in the door? Procurement much less happy when things are direct and you can't make a case that there are alternative products when usually there are, but usually the costs to change are bonkers!
That's a big bill - suspect a lot of Azure, Dynamics and added services included in that one!
If I had to guess (having worked in government myself), it'll be because (a) there's probably a load of non-Microsoft products as well so they're acting as a one-stop shop for it all, and (b) they're also acting as a line of defence for licence compliance by providing insurance against being audited because they've got one extra installation of Excel tucked away on that half-dead laptop in the back of the spares cupboard in the IT department.
MS aren't so bothered about individual installations these day - they've largely killed that off on the client side and made it sufficiently difficult that most have moved to subscription versions of Office, and Windows Enterprise likewise licensed as a subscription.
Still some one-off purchase licenses on the server side more often, but no doubt it's only a matter of time before they do the same there too...
At a guess - they have to invite competitive tenders. A monopoly supplier doesn't have a competitor so that wouldn't be a competitive tender.
A former colleague did some work with DWP. His simple comment? "Not the sharpest knives in the box."
What, buy directly and miss out on the chance for both Microsith and an unnecessary middleman to both get their cut? No, no, dear boy, that won’t do at all…
Meanwhile, my estate audit
of servers shows 0 MS, 95% ubuntu and 5% BSD which runs pfSense.
User machines have Win10 Pro licences (so no ongoing costs) and )365 is (pleasantly reasonable) at around £7 per seat per month.
Re: Meanwhile, my estate audit
you were doing well, then you admitted subscribing to shitty office 350.
you get a fail for that one.
Ah Softcat, the only company I've ever had to use a DPO email address for to stop their continually harassing sales calls. They never could get any order correct even when I did once use them.
I thought that UK Gov was supposed to be big on open formats and the like these days, so how come this contract is just going to the same old vendor lock-in, rather than LibreOffice (or Collabora Office) and NextCloud, or similar, being considered instead…?
The amount of money that just gets poured into the ever-hungry maws of US software companies rather than actually supporting a whole range of professional IT jobs in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, is sadly just incredible
Ok, so probably "silly question of the century" here, but if the DWP is spending that much on MS licenses, why aren't they just buying it direct from MS?