Councillor Tahir Rafiq, Cabinet Member for Corporate Affairs and HR, presented the report which sought to procure a solution for consolidated legacy applications not compatible with the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform. Members voiced their support for the report, in particular ensuring more digitally enabled systems for licensing and ease of use for the end user.
Decision:
Cabinet approved the decision to procure the solution as detailed on Part B to allow the continuation of the cloud migration programme.
Reasons for the decision:
· The savings that will be generated as detailed in Part B.
· Two of the legacy applications are not Microsoft Azure compatible and the servers that they currently reside on will be out of security support by the end of the 2023.
· The existing servers reside within the Town Hall and Textile Hall data centres which are due to be decommissioned by the end of 2023.
Alternative options considered and rejected
· To continue to invest in the Council’s on-premise data centre which is high risk due to the age of the hardware and infrastructure. In this case the Council would not benefit from having data stored in a cloud environment, or the improved data management to support the delivery of high-quality business intelligence.
· The Council retains the option to upgrade to newer Azure compatible solutions and remain with the existing suppliers of the legacy systems, however this would mean continuing to pay three sets of maintenance fees for the separate systems and would not realise the benefit of a fully integrated solution.