If it ain’t broke, why fix it? That’s the age-old saying, isn’t it?
According to a report released by the Cabinet Office, the government spends £4.7bn a year on IT across all departments, and £2.3bn goes on patching up systems, some of which date back 30 years or more.
So, it would seem there is a lot of fixing to do.
But how, and why, is this the case? And what can the public sector do to keep their systems secure, compliant, and efficient without shelling out billions that just aren’t in the budget?
ERP systems, such as Oracle, are oftentimes business critical systems and are essential in the day-to-day operations of large organisations.
It’s no surprise, then, that these IT systems eat through a considerable portion of an organisation’s IT budget. This is something that has come to the attention of the public sector, including local governments; more so in recent years as budgets facing more challenges than ever before, with the pandemic and inflation being just a couple of prominent factors.
The trouble is, however, Oracle/SAP software is deeply embedded within the public sector. Many government bodies built their IT estates around Oracle, so simply switching vendors could result in a huge disruption to the essential services provided.
It’s for precisely this reason that Oracle feels it can overcharge for poor support services. The ongoing support and maintenance of these crucial ERP systems is yet another significant cost to the public sector.
Rather than the cost of these products reducing over time (as you would usually expect for a long-term investment such as this), the price to maintain an older Oracle product increases and can equate to 22% of a customer’s licence costs for the first five years.
Oracle’s tiered support model sees customers experience a declining level of support as they journey from Premier Support to Sustaining Support over the years. This is journey that the vendor is happy to oversee, knowing that these organisations would struggle to find the budget to facilitate a migration to an alternative vendor.
The public sector is always looking to reduce its costs and extend its existing resources and budget; this is truer than ever now, with many departments feeling the strain that has amassed over the past two years.
Many IT departments throughout local governments find it hard to justify the expense of Oracle Support which, in turn, does not warrant the payoff from an Oracle upgrade. Particularly when this budget could be better utilised for other key initiatives and projects, such as digital transformation.
That’s why many government bodies, and several regional and local councils, have turned to third-party support to reduce their support fees, as well as their reliance on Oracle.
Third-party support providers enable organisations that run Oracle services to receive best-in-class software support and maintenance from a dedicated team of experts. We ensure every customer can save at least 50% on support costs, and on average have saved our customers 64% of their annual Oracle Support bill.
Fortunately, our 24+ years of experience and history as an Oracle partner means that we can support all versions of the vendor’s products, including “legacy systems” – software that some departments within the UK government continue to depend on.
As we are able to provide the necessary support and maintenance for these product versions, the public sector can choose to stick with the existing version of their software and break free of the upgrade cycle, releasing back crucial budget to the IT department.
While the public sector responds to the changing needs of the world today, moving support contracts to third-party providers offers a simple solution; it can dramatically reduce costs, maintain services for ERP systems, and keep things running efficiently.
Support Revolution are a U.K based organisation so are experienced in navigating the complexities of GDPR compliance, and also offer our services through the G-Cloud framework so public organisations can be assured they’re in capable hands.
We’ve already helped several central and local government bodies throughout the UK to make huge savings on their Oracle estates, and without any disruption to the crucial services these government bodies provide to their communities.
To find out how these government bodies have benefited from a move to Support Revolution, why not get in touch?
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