Bytes CAS helps Hounslow Borough Council to renew their agreement with confidence
Overview
London Borough of Hounslow Council (LBoH) is the local authority for Hounslow, a suburban area of West London with a vibrant community and economy. As a progressive council, LBoH have pledged to deliver thousands of affordable new homes and training opportunities by 2022, alongside plans to be carbon neutral by 2030. These commitments are underpinned by a strong desire for digital change and an IT strategy consisting of the latest modern technology solutions.
Challenge
LBoH were approaching a renewal for their Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) software licensing and needed to ensure that it met their technology objectives for the next 3 years, whilst maintaining compliance and minimising cost. LBoH were also considering their server infrastructure roadmap and wanted to explore licensing options for remaining on-premises or migrating to a cloud platform such as Azure, AWS or GCP.
The Bytes Solution
Having utilised Bytes’ Commercial Advisory Service (CAS) for their previous renewal, LBoH were once again keen to engage with the CAS team to meet the above objectives and identify the best route for their organisation.
Bytes’ CAS specialists held multiple workshops with key stakeholders at LBoH to understand their existing estate, future objectives and commercial concerns. Based on this, the CAS team then performed extensive cost analysis, before building several different commercial models that fitted the council’s needs and provided transparency in multiple cost scenarios based on potential variations under consideration. The CAS team then presented each model to LBoH, enabling them to understand the risks associated with each scenario and helping them to make a more informed final decision.
Benefits
If LBoH had simply renewed their Microsoft EA on an as-is basis and added some new security capabilities, they would’ve paid significantly more than needed. The final set of products ensures there’s no risk of shelfware (unused and wasted software) and allows for future movement should the need for more solutions arise - essential in today's ever-changing technology landscape.
Thanks to the expertise and impartial advice provided by Bytes’ CAS team, LBoH were also able to ensure that a future migration to the public cloud wouldn’t lead to surplus on-premises licensing for their server estate. This provided a significant cost reduction of over 50% in the licensing bought at renewal, which meant LBoH were able to modernise and continue providing quality services for their citizens, without exceeding the constraints of a public sector budget.
By using CAS we were able to take advantage of Bytes’ extensive commercial expertise both to minimise licensing expenditure and offset the cost of CAS itself. I thoroughly recommend using CAS and consider it a ‘no brainer’ decision when licensing renewal time comes around.