Agenda item

This report requested that the Cabinet Member for Finance and Local Investment to approve the award of contract as allowed under CSO 16.02 to Microsoft UK Ltd. This support contract can only be purchased directly from Microsoft. The Council’s Microsoft Unified support contract ends March 2024. As the Council has a major investment in Microsoft technologies it is vital that the support contract is renewed allowing access to premier support services directly from Microsoft. These services cover both proactive and reactive services.

Failure to renew the support contract, could expose the Council to risk and additional costs by having to pay higher rates for support.

Taking the 3 year option would achieve a saving of £12,000.00 in year 1 with an estimated cost avoidance of £119,061.28 in years 2 & 3 (increases have normally been between 20-40%pa). Making the total value of savings and cost avoidance £131,061.28. The costs would still be charged on an annual basis.

The Cabinet Member queried the financial particulars of the deal and was assured that the deal would save the Council a considerable amount of money for over three years as opposed to annual contracts.

The Cabinet Member RESOLVED

1. To award a contract to Microsoft UK Ltd for 3 years from 1/4/24 at a cost of: £582,550.92.

Reasons for decision

As Haringey Council’s IT infrastructure was based upon Microsoft technologies, ensuring that the on-site Digital & Change support team have access to Microsoft support engineers and consultants is a critical requirement in providing high level service availability. Failure to establish a support contract could involve disruption to Councils services, and additional costs should the Council look to Microsoft for support in the event of an issue.

Alternative options considered

There were five options that were considered:

1. Do Nothing–Do Not Renew While this was a theoretical option, the potential financial, technical and political impact on Haringey could be immense. This option was therefore not considered any further.

2. Unified Support Option 1 - £173,647.31 This support arrangement, while the cheapest, did not provide sufficient proactive services and should be viewed a minimum offering. Support for workshops and technical briefings would need to be costed separately, typically at a much higher price. Historically, these were services that had been used and had been very beneficial.

3. Unified Support Option 2 - £185,897.31 This option was closely aligned with Haringey’s requirements and would have been selected if it were not due to the increased focus on data sharing, information governance and the current SharePoint project.

4. Unified Support Option 3 - £196,047.31 Last year, unified support option 3 was selected as this enabled the council to fast track the enablement of E5 features. The use of an engineer aligned with the Council’s outcomes provided much value and had been very well received by the engineering team. Based upon the requirement to deliver data driven key initiatives this year i.e. assisting the SharePoint project, data retention policies, data loss prevention, information tagging, controlling data sharing, implementing GDPR and information governance, the inclusion of a dedicated engineering resource should enable the Council to deliver on these outcomes in a best practices fashion. As last year, having an engineer engaged would allow the Council to “fast track” changes (having the technical knowledge and experience) and be a direct escalation route into Microsoft.

5 Unified Support Option 3 –36 month Option - £582,550.92
This is the first time a 3 year option has been available to procure. This would not only save/avoid price increases but also save time in the procurement process. It would still offer the same services provided under option 3 but over a 3 year period.