Crown Commercial Service’s new agreement with software supplier
Oracle has landed a three year extension to its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), despite recent reports of moves in government to water down its business with the company.
CCS said the new MoU builds on the deal agreed in 2012, taking in extra products and services and extending the scope to more public sector bodies, including the NHS.
Sally Collier, chief executive of CCS, said: “The enhanced MoU will deliver savings across government and allow easier and more effective procurement of Oracle products and services. It lays the foundation of a more collaborative relationship between government and Oracle.”
The company has a long term base in supplying enterprise resource planning software to the public sector, although its product range extends into middleware, applications, servers and storage, including cloud based systems.
There have recently been press reports of concern in the Cabinet Office about the number of Oracle licences used around government, and that different organisations have their own deals rather than using a centralised arrangement. This prompted talk of the government aiming to cut down on its business with the company.
The new MoU could amount to an effort to impose more consistency on public authorities’ dealings with the company, or a recognition that a large scale shift to other suppliers within the next three years is not viable.
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
