Government locked into £330m Oracle contract until 2016

Not one, not two but three mega-tech firms are getting paid....

The Home Office is locked into a £330m mega-contract with Oracle and Fujitsu until 2016 – despite recent moves to slash costs by shifting its ERP system into a shared services centre run by French mega-integrator Steria, according to a Freedom of Information response.

The contract was signed in 2009 for an Oracle E-Business Suite across 29,518 users.

The Home Office uses Oracle E-Business Suite. It plans to upgrade to version R12.1 in July 2015.

Oracle is the main ERP software used by government. Some 134,700 users have licences with the company across the Department for Work and Pensions, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Education, the Health & Safety Executive and the Office for Nuclear Regulation, according to a separate Freedom of Information response sent to El Reg.

The public sector spent £290m in 2013 with Oracle, down just one per cent from the year before, according to research from TechMarketView. Spend with Fujitsu for 2013 was £898m, down one per cent compared to the previous year.

But the government intends to cut back office costs by moving ERP systems to shared services centres. In October the Home Office announced plans to move its ERP systems over to the shared services centre run by outsourcer Steria. The French integrator's revenues for calendar 2013 were €1.75bn, while it pocketed €12.7m in net income.

However, it is unclear how much savings the centres are yet making, with a number of departments bound by legacy contracts.

Last year the government claimed the centres could save up to £600m per year. ®