The Government plans to drop millions of pounds’ worth of contracts with Microsoft to pursue cheaper, open-source solutions.
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said he wants to “open the door for a host of other software providers”, including UK SMEs.
Since 2010 £200m has been spent by the Government on Microsoft Office alone.
Deja vu
But it’s not the first attempt by the UK Government to part ways with the corporation.
Attempts to cut costs and break the “oligopoly” of IT suppliers date back 12 years, with policy announcements from both 2002 and 2009 never taking shape.
Best of both worlds
Maude wants to find ways of giving out more public-sector contracts to UK companies, while at the same time saving public money.
One great example of the potential from small businesses was when we re-tendered a hosting contract.
The incumbent big supplier bid £4m; a UK-based small business offered to do it for £60,000. We saved taxpayers a whopping 98.5%.
Maude also hailed the creation of CloudStore, an online marketplace for councils – up to £10m a month is being spent on the site, with over half going to SMEs.
Up to the challenge
Meg Hillier, MP for Shoreditch and Hackney South, said that if the Government goes through with the plans startups could really benefit.
It’s a nugget of hope that the Government is really beginning to get it.
Government contracts are a really good baseline for growth and, lets face it, Tech City startups are up to the challenge.
Please restart your browser
However, migrations away from dominant software have often proved difficult for the Government.
In 2010 they described it as “not straightforward” to upgrade from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8.
And in 2012 they admitted that, despite internal IT policies, open-source software still wasn’t widely used.
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