Purpose

This report recommends
approving a contract for the re-procurement of the
Council’s
Microsoft Enterprise Licencing
Agreement, Microsoft Azure Cloud Services and Microsoft Unified
Support contracts.
 
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.
 

Content

For the reasons
set out in the report, the Assistant Chief Executive AGREED to the
following recommendations:
 
Approve the award of a contract for the following 2 related
contracts as follows:
 
a)   
Microsoft Enterprise Licencing Agreement and
Microsoft Azure Cloud Services for a duration of 3-years from 1
July 2025 until 30 June 2028 with the contract value stated in the
Part B report.
 
b)   
Microsoft Unified Support contract for a duration of
3-years from 1 June 2026 until 31 May 2029 with the contract value
stated in the Part B report.
 
Note
the contractor’s name and contract value will
be published following contract award.