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back to article 'Special relationship': Oracle bags UK.gov contract renewal

Database giant Oracle has bagged a renewed contract to supply its technology to Whitehall in a deal that the Cabinet Office claimed would save £75m for taxpayers by 2015. The California multinational is one of the biggest provider's to government, Francis Maude's department said when announcing the agreement this morning. It …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so what happened

    To the promise from Cameron that smaller businesses will have the opportunity to bid for contracts for government departments?

    Are the tender rules so written that only big business can tick all the boxes?

    Easy to exclude the 'little people' by moving the goal posts.

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    1. Is it me?
      Reply Icon

      Re: so what happened

      Um, not sure which small businesses you would mean here. There are smaller players but the trouble is the big boys have a habit of buying them up once they get to a certain size. I'm not sure you'll find a viable small company that supplies enterprise database software anyway, there are some in the applications and collaboration arena who compete quite successfully with MS and Oracle.

      The other thing is that you quite often need to get applications accredited to common criteria standards, and small companies can't afford that. When your department says all IT products must be evaluated to EAL 4, regardless of appropriateness, well...

      Trouble with the big boys and applications is that they market leaders and turn them into also rans.

      It will be interesting to see how the new model affects those departments with universal licences which give unlimited usage for database and middleware products.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: so what happened?

    But Oracle is a smaller business as far as the Government is concerned.

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  3. ChrB
    Happy

    April 1st already?

    "Today’s deal will mean that the government acts as a single, intelligent client, ... "

    Govt is an intelligent client? This made my day.

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