New Microsoft Deal (UK NHS)

Wow looks like Microsoft have done really well to get a £500 million deal out of the UK NHS (National Health Service - aka "Free Healthcare"). That's nearly a billion dollars (you can have you soft drinks and styrofoam cups back now ).

So close to the recent UK should use OSS report as well

More info .. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39172449,00.htm

Glad my National Insurance contributions are going to a good cause...

Mine too - though actually this deal isn't as bad as I thought it might be. Bear in mind Sainsburys (a supermarket chain) just spent £3billion on a IT system that didn't work! At least if the doctor can't solve your problems he might make a little movie to break it gently to you with Windows Movie Maker, before inviting you to a game of Microsoft Flight Simulator or something...

It's worth nearly 10 billion dollars, but that's including a whack of software development, customization, migration, etc.

The actual Microsoft licensing is the 1B$.

The whole project is worth over 70 billion dollars.

The deal does save the NHS nearly 600 million dollars in licensing fees, and requires Microsoft to develop nearly 100 million dollars in free software for the NHS.

All told it's a damn good deal. Just to be clear, licensing for Linux, and support for Linux, on a million desktops would be 310,000,000$ (RedHat or SuSE). That's without the software development or the fact that this also includes access to EVERY Microsoft application, including server apps.

It's an Enterprise Agreement, which basically means no more CAL's, no more licensing, no more nothing as long as the NHS stays under the 900K seat limit. It's basically just like Sun's "per employee" licensing, and the cost is very reasonable when you think about it

Jeremy comparing it to linux isn't that fair, as microsoft isn't offering it to them at full whack, i'm sure given the chance novell or redhat would provide something simillar, not that i'm disagreeing with you.

I'm not sure its a good thing, IT in the NHS is a mess, with no training to staff, and a sort of fix problems as they arrise mentatlity leads to computers running win 95.

I wonder if a switch to linux would save money not because of the os, but because it would be different, forcing people to get training etc. And hopefully setting up better computing facilities, a change is as good as a holiday and all that.

Microsoft's been very clever, because, as all ms software can be run without paying for a lisence, linux for any trust will become an expensive option, and ms will want to keep the biggest employer in europe.

Tom

Tom Malone wrote:

I'm not sure its a good thing, IT in the NHS is a mess, with no training to staff

Not to mention a 98% Microsoft Windows infrastructure already.  I think everyone agrees that the cost of deploying Linux in a situation where a big investment has already been made in Microsoft is not always cost effective.  You *really* have to want to spend the money now to save it in the future if you move to a non-Windows OS.

For the NHS Microsoft is probably a good deal just so that the is a single homogenous environment. 

Currently different SHAs (Strategic Health Authorities) and Trusts have different software leading to the situation where my own area (just over the water from you Tom) has had a system up and running for 2 years that is spectacular - well the clinicians love it, but are soon going to have to dump it due to Government interference.  Whether that is good or bad is for better minds than mine to argue ... as long as I get my health care for free (well a small amount) then I'll be happy.  I've already had treatment that far outweighs the National Insurance I've paid

Tom Malone wrote:

Jeremy comparing it to linux isn't that fair, as microsoft isn't offering it to them at full whack, i'm sure given the chance novell or redhat would provide something simillar, not that i'm disagreeing with you.

It's not really a comparison I made. In the article I published on this earlier today, the immediate response from Linux Today and other sites was "see, Linux wouldn't have cost that much".

The reality is that at that level everything that includes support for 900,000 desktops is going to be several billion dollars because the average cost to support a desktop is over 1200$/year and in a Microsoft environment, a large portion of that (besides Desktop Support) is handled by Microsoft.

You're right, it's not fair to do a direct comparison, but it's a comment that was made here and elsewhere (in response to my article) so I felt like tackling it

It's definitely interesting to watch the articles I'm writing for various magazines and sites (I only branched out of blogging this week to become a "journalist" (of sorts)). Definitely not something I'm accustomed: being quoted for all kinds of things I didn't intend.

Always fun when talking about Microsoft or Linux, believe me

Jeremy W. wrote:

"see, Linux wouldn't have cost that much".

To be fair, you could probably give most of them an Etch-a-Sketch and they wouldn't know the difference