ESB has just signed one of the biggest and wide ranging software licensing agreements with Microsoft in Ireland under the terms of its Software Assurance Value programme.
The agreement, which will cover 4,500 users, will run for a three-year period and will provide a broad range of Microsoft desktop and enterprise server products and upgrades across all the business units of the ESB.
According to ESB’s head of IS, Brian Davis, the agreement coincides well with the electricity firm’s ongoing hardware refit. Dell was contracted over a year ago to supply ESB with new servers, notebooks and desktops in a deal worth around EUR10m. ‘It will make cloning the machines easier to do, simplify the rollout process and provide a range of management benefits.’
Davis said the company did consider alternatives, including open source and other software vendors, but it was felt that the utility’s size, profile, structure and organisation merited going with Microsoft.
He believes the programme will assist it in terms of easier budgeting, more efficient deployment and enhanced productivity. ‘The extra benefits provided by the Software Assurance Value programme provide ESB with continuous upgrades, keeping our systems to the forefront of the IT market,’ said Davis.
When it was first introduced in July 2002, critics of Microsoft’s software licensing scheme argued that, among other things, it forced users into upgrades they had not asked for. Microsoft revised the scheme 11 months later to provide extra benefits, including additional home user licensing options, better online and telephone support and free training on Microsoft products.
Davis said he was not too concerned about the fact that the company was now locked into an agreement with Microsoft for three years. ‘There is a bit of a trade off, but I think you have to get off the fence and make a decision,’ he said, adding that the company was ‘very happy’ with the agreement. However, he said that ESB would be keep its ‘ear close to the ground’ in terms of monitoring new developments in the software and licensing areas.
The new agreement is one of the most wide ranging of its type, in terms of the numbers of users covered, and represents an extension of ESB’s relationship with Microsoft.
Under the terms of the deal, the ESB will be licensed to implement the latest business productivity and infrastructure solutions from Microsoft, including Microsoft Office 2003 Professional, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Project Exchange Server 2003, the Enterprise Project Management (EPM) tools Microsoft Project Professional 2003 with Microsoft Project Server 2003, Microsoft Visio 2003, and the developers’ tool MSDN Universal.
23/10/2003
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