Microsoft renews cloud contracts with UK.gov amid ongoing legal spat with on-prem licence reseller

Microsoft has signed a fresh Memorandum of Understanding with the UK government to sell cloud services and biz apps at pre-agreed discounts amid accusations it is stifling the resale of excess on-premises software licences in the public sector. The MOU, specifically known as the Digital Transformation Agreement 2021 (DTA21), …

[gerryg]

Haven't we been here (or nearby) before?

Didn't Oracle lose a case about licence resale in about 2012? I think they took it all the way to the ECJ. And despite Brexit, the ruling would still hold sway here.

Nothing significant has happened in competition law legislation since then so I'm curious about how this one will play

[Anonymous Coward]

"buying its cloud wares would be cheaper than sticking with on-premises versions"

Until it's not.

[hoola]

Pretty much day one then

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame Tony Blair for this

Just when the government had an infrastructure plan that used open standards as a guiding principle, in walks T Blair who then let Bill Gates zap that principle as fast as they could pump Microsoft "consultants" into the government, and boy oh boy did they make a mess - a mess for which said B Gates eventually was knighted, by the way.

I don't think governments will ever learn that Microsoft isn't really suitable for government-sized deployments because the people that take those decisions typically only have a clue about playing golf, and if it all goes wrong there will be some middle level managers sacked as sacrificial lambs.

I can see the same happening in another country now where new management are Microsoft fans. The fact that some "Microsofted" processes now run at about 10% of the speed and triple the amount of manpower (and thus costs) as before is enthusiastically being ignored. As extra bonus, the data protection authorities in the country have been explicitly told to ignore the many privacy violations that this change introduces, they won't investigate.

Strangely, at the same time they're all complaining about bad security and increased break-ins. What a weird coincidence, no?

[FlamingDeath]

Re: I blame Tony Blair for this

All I can say is, I hope they read the fucking license agreement, because it is this which they are buying

For me, it just highlights how many untalented individuals work in government ,that they need to use an off the shelf package from some corporate entity

In the words Frito

“I like money”

[moshestrugano]

Re: I blame Tony Blair for this

I agree with your statement "how many untalented individuals work in government" and how people dealt with it

Moshe Strugano (Attorney - Moshe Strugano & Co. Law firm)

[hoola]

Support

Whoopy-doo on getting that included. Load of extra value from the Google jockeys they subcontract it to on those calls.

I have yet to have any experience of Premier Support that does not involve days of tearing your hair (what's left of it) out as you go through all the stupid questions and tests as they refuse to believe that:

Yes a cluster node did drop out of the cluster for reasons we believe are....... we need RCA

No, it is not is the logs you keep gathering because yo have waited too long to do anything but I have uploaded the cluster logs I took when it happened.

Where are the logs?

Upload, again, and again.

The cluster validation is failing in the diagnostic too - yes that is because the storage is online because this is in production

And so it goes on......