Warwickshire approved a Microsoft renewal worth about £9m in principle. It still has to find the extra £375,000 a year.
The renewal covers Microsoft 365 licences from June 2027 to May 2030 at roughly £3m a year, Computer Weekly reported.
That is about £375,000, or 15%, more each year than the council pays now.
Councillor Michael Bannister, who introduced the report, said the rise was mainly due to Microsoft's pricing changes across the public sector. The council's previous renewal had kept older national pricing.
Rob Howard, the former leader, said members were shocked at the cost. The current licences expire in May 2027.
Green councillor Keith Kondakor said that under subscription licensing, where the council pays each year to use the software, Microsoft "can whack the price up."
Any final decision to award the contract rests with the council's executive director for resources. The UK Competition and Markets Authority is considering designating Microsoft's business software with strategic market status. Microsoft contests the premise of that investigation.
By its former leader's account, there was too little time to switch before May 2027. The proposed deal would run to 2030, when the same question returns.
Sources
Our file on Microsoft
- 30 Oct
Microsoft's GitHub said AI agents wrote first drafts of over 40% of code change requests in September. In March it was 17%.
- 30 Oct
Microsoft is borrowing at least $25 billion, Bloomberg reported. Its CFO says cloud demand still exceeds what Microsoft can supply.
- 30 Oct
OpenAI's Codex and Microsoft's VS Code are still unpatched, researchers say. They found security flaws in five AI coding tools.
- 29 Oct
Microsoft says Canada Goose cut its month-end close to five days from eight. It had used old software and Excel.
- 29 Oct
Microsoft said Copilot users grew 50% quarter on quarter. CIOs still owe finance a justification for each paid seat.
For your next steering committee
- 1Ask when each major software contract renews and what notice period applies.
- 2Ask which price protections are written into the contract and which rest on a sales conversation.
- 3Ask what a price rise on that line would do to the run budget, and who would notice it first.
Issue 01 of the ERP LEADERS brief puts a timeline, the three-number review and six questions on one page. Read issue 01
Welcome back. · Issue 01
