BUSINESS CHALLENGE
ENSURE THE ENVIRONMENT AGENCY MAXIMISES ITS ANNUAL £6 MILLION INVESTMENT IN SOFTWARE LICENCES AND SUPPORT
THE SOLUTION
WORK WITH A SPECIALIST PROVIDER TO REDUCE THE COSTS AND COMPLEXITY OF MANAGING AND PROCURING MULTIPLE LICENCES
BENEFITS
REDUCED PRICES WITH A MAJOR VENDOR BY 60 PER CENT; RISK OF NON-COMPLIANCE REDUCED; SIMPLIFIED LICENSING MANAGEMENT AND PROCUREMENT; IDENTIFIED LICENCE UNDER-UTILISATION
The Environment Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales. Its job is to make sure that air, land and water are looked after by everyone in today’s society, so that tomorrow’s generations inherit a cleaner, healthier world. A significant part of the Environment Agency’s role lies in managing the risk from flooding to homes and properties across the country.
To deliver its services, the Environment Agency relies on hundreds of different bespoke and off-the-shelf applications. Procuring, tracking and managing these software assets was a considerable challenge. As Phil Cranch, software licensing manager for the Environment Agency, explains: “This is a big organisation and our employees are located across England and Wales. As a result, different people were procuring applications through different suppliers. Our purchasing processes were inefficient and we were not maximising our investment in licences. Generally we needed better control of our software estate.”
With this lack of visibility of the entirety of its software estate, and some cumbersome manual processes, the Environment Agency also ran the risk of both licensing non-compliance and under-utilisation. “We wanted to ensure that we were managing our software assets in a legal and cost-effective manner,” says Cranch. “We needed to gain control of the purchasing process, implement ITIL best practices and take advantage of value-added vendor services, such as education and support, that are often included in licensing agreements.”
To address these issues, the Environment Agency called in Computacenter’s software experts to clarify the position on its major vendors through an Effective Licence Position (ELP) review across eight key software licensing agreements, including Symantec and Microsoft.
As a result, Computacenter was able to identify licence under-utilisation and negotiate with vendors on behalf of the organisation. At the same time, the Environment Agency centralised its software purchasing activities, worth around £6 million per annum, with Computacenter as its preferred supplier.
It also looked to Computacenter to provide a range of supporting services to help improve its software management. “We simply can’t be experts in every licensing contract for every vendor that we use,” comments Cranch. “We therefore need external help to make sure we get the best deal from vendors. Computacenter has the relationships, impartiality and expertise to make this happen.”
One of the key priorities was to establish that the Environment Agency had the right licensing arrangements in place for its major applications. As James Sylvester, Computacenter account manager, explains: “Organisations have multiple licensing agreements in place and lots of renewals, yet they rarely have access to the resources needed to cope with this level of complexity. It takes a lot of detailed knowledge of different agreements and licensing frameworks to make sure an organisation is getting best value.”
As well as helping to maximise the value of its licensing agreements, Computacenter has also provided the Environment Agency with consultancy advice on the creation of its Definitive Software Library. This is a managed repository for copies of all its software, licences and contracts, helping it to control its estate and simplify day-to-day management.
As part of its ongoing role in software fulfilment, which is processed via Catalist (the Government’s IT procurement catalogue), Computacenter provides the Environment Agency with a monthly report of software purchases. It also assists with the annual renewal of software maintenance contracts – a whole separate challenge, as Cranch explains: “We have to ensure continuity of maintenance support for around 50 applications. Keeping track of this could be complex and time-consuming but Computacenter has set up a system which allows us to track, review and verify that we still need the support agreements, ensuring we don’t spend money on anything we no longer need.”
Obtaining value for money is a key benefit of the partnership with Computacenter, which has already helped the Environment Agency reduce its annual spend on licences from a single vendor by £30,000.
As Cranch confirms: “Signing a new agreement with a major vendor has reduced our prices in that area by nearly 60 per cent. All the money we save enables us to do more for the environment.”
Critically, the Environment Agency has also been able to reduce the risk of software non-compliance. “We are in the business of licensing and regulation ourselves. We cannot risk not complying with vendor software agreements. It could represent a big risk to our reputation,” comments Cranch. “With Computacenter’s help, we now have better visibility and control of our software estate and can identify and deal with compliance at the right time.”
FURTHER INFORMATION
For more information on Computacenter’s licensing services, go to www.computacenter.com/software
