Microsoft has won a nine-year contract, worth an estimated £500m, to put its software on 900,000 National Health Service computers, the Department of Health announced today.
The contract, which provides a saving of a £330m on the NHS' current deal with Microsoft, involves Microsoft providing its operating system, desktop products and bespoke software to the NHS. The deal allows the NHS to use up to 900,000 licences, compared to its current allowance of 500,000. Microsoft has also agreed to carry out £40m of research and development to provide guidelines and toolkits that will allow independent software vendors to deliver an NHS-specific user interface.
The nine-year contract, which includes breakpoints at three-year intervals, does not preclude the future use of open-source software, according to the Department of Health. "The option to use open-source software in the future remains and continues to be evaluated," stated the DoH.
Neil Jordan, the head of healthcare at Microsoft UK, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that it is pleased with the announcement and is not concerned about the future risk of being replaced by open-source software.
"It's a great day for Microsoft to see an entity as large as the NHS putting its trust in Microsoft," said Jordan. "We're happy for them to continue to evaluate open-source software."
Jordan was unwilling to disclose the exact value of the deal, but stated that £500m was in the right order.
The Microsoft deal is part of the programme to upgrade the NHS' IT systems, a project that was originally estimated to cost £6bn.
The contract flies in the face of the report released last week by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), the government's procurement watchdog, which described Linux as a viable desktop alternative for the majority of government users. A spokesman from the OGC was unable to comment in time for this article.
James Governor, an analyst from Red Monk, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that the deal comes at a good time for Microsoft, given the OGC's recent statement.
"This is a feather in the cap at a very good time for Microsoft -- a week after the OGC report," said Governor. "It shows people that Microsoft is still the mainstream choice -- and is still the default in infrastructure."
Governor said the £500m being given to Microsoft is a large proportion of the total cost of the project. An open-source solution might not involve such steep fees.
"That's half a billion in licensing costs. I'll leave that up to the taxpayer to decide whether that's worth it," said Governor.
Eddie Bleasdale, the director of open-source consultancy firm netproject, told ZDNet UK that he was not surprised by the news as NHS infrastructure is based on Microsoft technology and it would not make business sense to change it.
"The NHS is a very large organisation and have an IT infrastructure that is currently based on Microsoft software," said Bleasdale. "Even with the best will in the world you can't rip it out and change it. I think it could well be a sensible business decision."
Bleasdale also said he considered the length of the contract restrictive.
"A nine-year contract does seem a bit long," said Bleasdale. "A lot of things could happen in the next nine years, which could affect the choice of software. The lack of lock-in with Linux is absolutely essential -- Linux is free, as in freedom."
Talkback
Snookered again! Locked in for nine years... congratulations!
This *is* the UK government, what do you expect? They've not had an IT project complete well in the last god knows how many years - not like they will succeed anyway. In fact aren't most of the SHAs going their own way anyway most of the time?
Will that be with or without IE?
Or haven't you read the latest news?
What seems like a bargain for some will end up as a never ending project filled with requirements for additional investments. Likely to be labelled 'unforseen'. Don't be surprised if a lot of such advises will come out of the corner of the Microsoft sponsored research and development that is to provide guidelines and toolkits.
Sure, Open Source will be possible. If you absolutly must, they'll say. But adviseable? Who will determine that? The boys and girls making the guidelines and toolkits? Or perhaps the managers reading those guidelines?
DRM, IE7, MIIS, BizTalk, .NET, FrameWork, SharePoint Portal, Longhorn and the rest are very much so more likely to offer 'the most functionality' (or whatever the hype term is then) if things are kept 100% Microsoft . Depanding on who you listen to. The usual tactic is to change one thing at a time. So that the best option for each step is to keep as much untouched as possible (gee, didn't see that one coming) and so forth. Never mind that many small ones still make a big one. And that the trick is to know what you have and where you want to end up (total solution wise) to then define each step that needs to be taken to go from A to B. Not beginning with A and thru a series of steps find out what B looks like. Because the more steps you take that way the more likely it is that you'll end up having their B (which will be by that time your A again).
Sure, ripping out and replacing an existing Microsoft solution isn't wise. But that's not to say that one needs to invest in even more Microsoft products to get things done in ever more (cost) efficient ways. Plenty of examples out there that have already demonstrated that. Especially in the health sector.
Also interesting to note that this NHS project was originally estimated to cost £6bn and now, suddenly, for significant less.
Doesn't that ring a bell? How come it's so much cheaper all of a sudden? Doesn't it feel like having been ripped all those years? Why reward that and expect to get away with it?
I'm sure a bunch of sales people and managers celebrated this deal. Singing the old consultant tune: "Stupid. You can pay me now or you can pay me later."
Update: save 300M pay 12B more
NHS Strikes Money-Saving Deal with Microsoft
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3712023
"The procurement price agreed by the Government was £6 billion but it is now estimated total implementation costs will be between £18.6 billion and £31 billion, according to Computer Weekly magazine."
Sorry about that. Should have said in my earlier post: they're getting ripped already.
Mad, stupid, thoughtless, lack of common sense.
A typical burocratic b**** up. Why buy a software solution that is most vulnerable to Viruses and hackers, cost several times more, is less stable and one of the least user friendly computing envioronments arounds that will cost millions in additional training.
Why not go Unix (Apple Solutions) or Linux (Sun solutions)?
We switched to Mac servers and mac machines and saved £15K per year on licenses, went form 4 to 2 technicans, had no viruses or hackers attack our systems and so far had 100% up time. The kit works well, and looks great. We have just put addiitonal linux SUn servers in for additional functionality and capacilty.
A typical government sticking with old out of date thinking with no vision for the future!
I have seen evangelist videos of what Longhorn (next Win OS) will do for each industry and for the medical sector it looked amazing, I can see MS overcomming a lot of its current problems, certainly in nine years time.
Face it, most use Windows -- because its easy and good. Of course the IE browser is suffering but I have a lot of faith if future development, I'd rather our NHS used Windows than something else that might not be compatible:
"oh sorry you can't send/open this electronic x-ray -- oh well the patient will have to do without, so who do we call to fix it?!"
Decisions like this really anger me, this is the same NHS thats supposingly so strapped of cash, to just throw another half a billion pounds down the toilet? The taxpayers definately do not have their say. This extra costs could of been avoided. Funny how this comes when Microsoft has one of the biggest antitrust cases in the UK going on. When I was over there I have seen the recent degrade in healthcare due to this supposed lack of funds to provide it.
The NHS doesn't have enough problems?
Please use a few more TLA (Three Letter Acronyms) without pre defining what they are.
Just incase you can't read the skepticism there you can read it here.
Samuel, basing your hopes on the sales stories of the commercially motivated is one sure way to end up very disappointed and with not enough budget left to break out of the lock. Really, the so called vaporware is easy to sell. When dealing with commercial parties be sure that they demonstrate life and realisticly with what they have right now.
That most use Microsoft is not a motivation. Most used to smoke, drive without seatbelts, drive drunk, etc. Because of whatever. The question is: what has to happen before you'll call it quits? If you can't answer that (or don't live up to it) then we can safely say that you're addicted. And addicition does cloud sound judgement capabilities.
As for your x-ray example. I think they should fire on the spot any manager that approved x-ray equipment that can only use certain Microsoft products in only electronic ways to make x-rays available. Because in my view such a manager would be the real cause of putting human lives in danger. Simply because whatever you use and whatever you do things will go wrong sometime. So have fall-back procedures in place and know that natures proven answer to unexpected disasters (big and small) is diversity. Yes, it'll cost extra budget to achieve the right mix (which will differ per industry, per company, per moment in time) between being prepared for anything and staying cost efficient but a manager who can't explain that to the brass should be replaced by a manager that can.
Hello
I'm in desktop support. When things go crap with a PC with Windows, I reimage it. I don't think anyone calls up Microsoft saying oh why did this happen? How do I fix it? Our organisation is moving to XP because win 2000 won't be supported any more. I don't understand that. We never use their support. Even if we did call up, they'd say it's due to some other software.
Also we got web applications that require to install client side software, which is like what's the point of it being a web application? If it's a web application it should run on any browser, any os.
If I was in charge I'd install OpenOffice on desktops and get users used to that, have it running side by side with office 97. Most user's know nothing about Office 97, so why not have user's know nothing about OpenOffice? The organisation also stopped people making their own databses on access, so further making the case for OpenOffice. But no, we are going to Office XP with the XP migration, and everyone's going to be trained to use Office XP LOL So why not have OpenOffice and train people to use that? And don't give me that Microsoft support availability on their Office. When Office messes up on a desktop we just reinstall or worst case we reimage. The only active involvement Microsoft has with our organisation is in selling us their stuff. Their support thing is like a placebo (I fink dats how u spell it).
Its not as if the current system _is_ Windows, bringin in the cost of change.
In my recent extensive experience with the NHS I've seen:
Most medical notes are in paper form. XRays and CT scans are passed around as film. The patient can't have that electronic x-ray sent because at the moment it doesn't exist, and getting physical x-rays between hospitals just doesn't seem to be done. I've had repeat xrays because of this. XRays are images. Linux software handles images just fine. Lets hope the NHS mandate an open format like PNG or JPG.
Radiologist reports, and even most test results, are passed around as paper and get stuck into the big patient file. Different departments (Oncology, GP, local hospital for dealing with the side effects) have their own files with their own version of events, and the patient has to provide some communication ("So what has Dr XXX been doing with you?")
My tumour marker and blood count tests are pubished on an AIX based system, which has recently been given a web front end. This works really well. Fast results from the blood lab are essential for chemotherapy as you have to wait around before receiving any treatment to be sure that the blood test earlier that morning is good enough that it is safe to continue. With the web based system, the oncologist can get the results as they appear. A push/mail/subscription system would be even better. The sooner you get confirmation and start, the sooner you finish and go home.
Old Windows 3.1 apps, running on Windows 3.1 on standalone systems, are used for calculating things like chemotherapy and radiotherapy doses. These are double checked. The actual delivery of radiotherapy and chemotherapy is given by dedicated systems presumably running safe purpose build operating systems. Blue Screen of Death would take on a whole new meaning if these ran Windows.
CT scans are on big UNIX systems. This is a lot of data and 3D processing, which bigger iron is still needed to process and display. The amount of data in a CT scan is huge, even when processed. The NHS will need a lot of bandwidth if its going to pass this kind of data around, though an old IBM product, CatWeb (Java based online 3D vieweing), could be interesting here. Fortunately the radiologist report is generally short, maybe a few hundred bytes of plain text - another "Open Format".
Some people use Windows for typing letters and things - something that Star Office could easily provide.
The NHS certainly has a lot of scope for improvement with IT. Centralised patient data and easier communication would be great. I'd not have to repeat my medical history all the time. Results would get to doctors sooner. There'd be no need to repeat x-rays (though thats only happened once).
All this is new development though. Its a huge system and I'm not aware of anything that does this kind of thing already. There's no need for it to be based on Windows, and even the argument "Because Office is familliar to Users" is weak. The web works so well, and Office could be made to talk to an open standards based backend system. Perhaps it will.
I do not understand why our National Health Service has awarded a contract with Microsoft. Surely a cheaper alternative could have been found.