NHS Hertfordshire takes up ownership of licensing compliance with Trustmarque

Trustmarque chosen two years after NHS's Microsoft Enterprise Agreement ended

NHS Hertfordshire has taken up ownership of licensing compliance with IT solutions provider Trustmarque, two years after the NHS's Microsoft Enterprise Agreement expired.

"There was a lot of ambiguity as to what needed to be done and when, over the two years that we had between the [Microsoft] agreement coming to an end [in May 2010] and when we actually got Trustmarque in," Martin Wallis, assistant director of ICT services and CTO at NHS Hertfordshire, told Computing.

"It came to a head with the end of the financial year in April 2012 when there was an opportunity, incentivised by Microsoft, and changes to the public sector agreement that meant it made financial sense to get it all done by the end of that financial year," he added.

The selection of Trustmarque's Microsoft Commercial Benchmarking Service came because NHS Hertfordshire had an existing relationship with the provider.

"Having worked with Trustmarque on a number of licensing projects in the past, the company was the natural choice for this as it already had a thorough understanding of us as an organisation and our estate. The team worked hard to understand our current position and long-term strategy, coming up with a solution that allowed for flexibility and change," Wallis stated.

NHS Hertfordshire did not look into any other vendors' offerings, as it was a relatively small amount of money being invested, he confirmed.

The NHS Hertfordshire CTO said that the solution allowed the organisation to become compliant with Microsoft licensing, to identify short falls that had happened over the years and to place an order with Microsoft.

The solution ensured that NHS Hertfordshire was not repurchasing software while gaining the maximum benefit from existing software.

"It also helped us not to overspend because there were options being put forward by Microsoft that we could have taken but Trustmarque gave us the confidence to say that we didn't think we needed to get quite so many of the particular options being offered," Wallis said.

Wallis stated that he was confident the solution would enable the trust to keep its licensing costs under control in the future.

"The [Trustmarque] team analysed our licensing based on our unique set of requirements rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. This granular level of detail helped make our decisions easier because everything was so transparent. We are now certain that our estate is licensed in a manner that gives us a better base from which to offer services and we are in a strong position for future developments," he said.

"It's something we'll probably repeat sometime this year or next year. We've recently combined with the Essex Business Unit to become Central Eastern Commissioning Support Unit (CSU) and as part of that consolidation I'd expect us to do a similar exercise over the next 12 to 18 months."