Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester Councils, two local authorities in northwest England, have signed a six-year £35m contract with Insight Direct for Microsoft licenses and cloud services.

Indeed, the two councils have decided to adopt Microsoft Azure SaaS/PaaS and other cloud-hosted services and products under the deal. Hence, they are committed to continuing to migrate core applications into an Azure cloud environment through the engagement with their strategic cloud enablement partner.

The decision was authorized in September 2020 by the cabinet of Cheshire East Council. It was reported that the deal was supported by a Memorandum of Understanding between Microsoft and the UK government, The Digital Transformation Arrangement, and the Azure Pricing Agreement amendment from 30 April 2020 to 30 April 2021.

These engagements will enable UK public sector customers to receive discounts for Cloud-hosted solutions.

The deal was made shortly after the arrangement to secure a Microsoft cloud migration partner for £5.31m over a two-year contract period, which was funded by both Cheshire East Council and Cheshire West and Chester.

This cloud migration will give huge financial benefits for both Councils service areas as well as successfully meet their needs.

The decision behind their joint IT strategy comes from sharing an ERP system, based on Unit4. The councils have also signed for a new HR and finance system, replacing an Oracle system, which is expected to go live in February. However, it has been noticed that Unit4’s cloud software only works with Azure.

Thus, the entire cost of the initiatives would then go up to £22.3m.