Trustmarque help the police

Trustmarque Solutions has announced that its Commercial Benchmarking service has saved Durham Constabulary police force a very useful £190,000 per annum on licensing costs, plus also ensuring it was eligible for future support and benefits from Microsoft.

Durham Constabulary needed to review its licensing agreements as it had cut the number of computers it used.

During the review period they realised they should move its licence renewal forward in order to ensure it could support its desktop operating system for the next six years and to enable a programmeof work to match its ICT Strategy.

Durham police also had a good deal of future development work planned because it was moving towards a SharePoint strategy, plus a new Microsoft Office environment with Office 2010, and exploring the deployment of Microsoft Lync.

As it was working to tight deadlines, it realised it needed outside, specialist assistance, so brought Trustmarque Solutions in to help it to find cost-effective solutions.

Steve Wright, Head of ICT Service Operations and Support for Durham Constabulary, explains: “Our key aim was getting value for money on procurement. We were using a Microsoft Select agreement, where you basically buy from the catalogue, the most expensive way of licensing.

“We talked to Trustmarque about their benchmarking service and it sounded ideal. We had worked with Trustmarque before and had a good relationship with them, and trusted them to point us in the right direction.”

Trustmarque worked with Durham Constabulary to identify a 'strategy roadmap' for the next six years, around various products it was looking to invest in, providing information on all the products that would be available to it under various Microsoft agreements, what the benefits would be and how this fitted in with their future vision.

The process was completed within five months, and in February 2011 Durham Constabulary signed a new agreement which should help it make savings of £190,000 over the course of the next three years.

But there are other benefits, too. Steve Wright adds: “The Trustmarque Commercial Benchmarking team was great. They spoke to us about what we were planning to do with the organisation, helped us to do an inventory of what licences we had and which could be redeployed within the organisation.

“Trustmarque outputs helped us to outline the life time of the products and how these fit in with our future strategy. Trustmarque came back with pricing for the various different licensing models available from Microsoft, and provided guidance on what would suit our needs best.

“Working with Trustmarque has given us a much richer understanding of Microsoft licensing. Using the Commercial Benchmarking service helped us to decide our procurement route, and saved us a lot of money.”

“The work conducted at Durham Constabulary shows how Trustmarque’s services are continuing to drive down the cost of IT in the public sector,” Simon Rutt, services and solutions director comments.

“Through this service alone we have seen organisations save, on average, 36 percent on a new or renewed Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. This is a fantastic achievement and the benefits of the cost savings can be realised immediately, and aside from this many of our customers come away with a more comprehensive view of their ICT estate, enabling them to ensure compliance and plan ahead.”

For more information about Trustmarque visit www.trustmarque.com, call them on 0845 2101 500 or email info@trustmarque.com.