East Sussex County Council dodges SAP S/4HANA upgrade bullet, sets aside £25m for a 10-year SaaS ERP deal

A council on the south coast of England has decided to climb off the SAP upgrade treadmill and instead seek out a cloudy ERP system. A user of SAP R/3 since at least 2005, East Sussex County Council has been weighing up its options for an upgrade. A tender document published this week confirmed the council's intention to opt …

[alain williams]

Why not get together ?

All UK councils must have roughly similar needs; all are splunking huge sums to solutions providers.

I can't see why they don't club together and produce something that does what they need, then all use it. Sure it would cost an arm & leg and take several years, but after that they will save bucket loads. Yes: there is maintenance (need change, etc). Maybe it could be open sourced and let councils/... in other countries use it, add modules, submit patches, etc.

When all councils are using the same s/ware: exchange of information would be so much easier.

[Mark 78]

Re: Why not get together ?

East Sussex have already got together with Surrey and Brighton & Hove Councils to run their IT systems.

[Jon 37]

Re: Why not get together ?

They don't have the skills to do that.

They also don't have the money to invest in long-term plans like that, even if they would save in the long term. They have an effectively fixed annual budget, and they are having to cut essential services.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why not get together ?

But who pays the kick backs and provides all expenses paid nights out if you go open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why not get together ?

The taxpayer!!

[RM Myers]

Re: Why not get together ?

You do realize that "open source" doesn't mean free, right? There are many open source vendors, and I'm sure many are willing to provide "perks".

[The Basis of everything is...]

Re: Why not get together ?

It's been tried several times, and generally failed. It's bad enough trying to get one council to decide what they actually want among all their various factions, let alone a group of them getting together and trying to come up with something they can agree among themselves and get buy-in from all their respective factions.

And having seen ESCC from the inside many years ago I wish whoever wins this tender the very best of luck as they're going to need it. I was so relieved when a subsequent employer did a little due diligence and then decided they really didn't need that level of pain.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

"The council wants one throat to choke"

In my experience of working with councils, this is generally the single thing in the contract that isn't negotiable. And it's usually the main argument for not going open source, too: "but who do we sue if it all goes wrong?"