A three-year government deal with Oracle is expected to
save tens of millions of pounds on public-sector IT procurement
costs, according to the Office of Government Commerce.OGC chief executive Peter Gershon said the
agreement would deliver value for money and speed the drive towards
the deployment of standardised systems based on common requirements
in the public sector.
The OGC approached Oracle to reach the new
pricing policy and Gershon said he expected it to be followed by
agreements with other IT suppliers.
Oracle is offering the special pricing on its
9i Database and 9i Application Server, and the OGC has predicted an
average 11% reduction in the cost of products directly and
indirectly purchased from Oracle.
Iain Campbell, director of Oracle's public
sector arm in the UK, said: "The agreement gives the UK government
the same pricing as Oracle offers the US government.
The three-year deal will take 9i users to the
end of the standard support period, but Campbell said any public
sector users with annual support contracts would be entitled to
free upgrades to 10i.
However, users with bedded-in systems are
sometimes reluctant to upgrade and the OGC said it was still
negotiating terms for ongoing support from Oracle.
The OGC also dismissed concerns that suppliers
and systems integrators seeking to supply the public sector would
react against the new pricing policy.
"The landscape has changed in the way the government does business
and we hope systems integrators embrace the new transparency," a
spokesman said.