The Department for Health (DfH) has finally broken its silence over the recently ended £80m Enterprise Wide Agreement licensing deal with Microsoft.
"The DfH has already invested so that NHS Trusts are able to have access to the latest versions of Microsoft desktop software. Future investment decisions will be taken at a local level in line with the proposals set out in the White paper published this week," a spokeswoman said in a statement.
It took nine days for them to respond, was that worth it? Funny that it came less than a day after the story was published.
Microsoft also kept schtum for the past week until the story was published.
Anyway, irrespective of the entities' reluctance to publicly comment on the deal, it is clear that the government continues to wield a sharp axe over any projects above £1m, and this could be a welcome fillip for SME resellers.
The EA collapse follows hot on the heels of the review of BSF, which was again dominated by the larger players that had the financial muscle to spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in bidding for projects.
The coalition has vowed to level the playing field for smaller suppliers, stating that it wants about 25% of public sector contracts to be awarded to SMEs.
Only time will tell if it's a genuine target, but then again the public sector is unlikely to offer up the sort of growth it has in the last 13 years.
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