Purpose

The Unified Support Agreement is Microsoft’s enterprise support offering that provides organisations with access to technical assistance for Microsoft products and cloud services, along with proactive guidance to help prevent issues, improve service health, and optimize usage over time. It typically combines incident-driven support (including escalation for critical issues) with planned, expert-led engagements and support management capabilities, enabling customers to manage risk and maintain operational continuity across their Microsoft 365 technology stack.

Decision

1. Appendices 1, 2, and 3 as well as Annex 1 are not for publication on the basis that they contain information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information) as set out in paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972 (as amended).
2. The Cabinet Member for Cllr Rowan Ree is asked to approve the procurement strategy and award decision for a new contract for the provision of Microsoft Unified Support. A direct award call-off procedure was initiated via Lot 3 of the Government Commercial Agency (GCA) formerly Crown Commercial Service (CCS) RM1554.14 G-Cloud 14 framework.
3. The Preferred Supplier is identified in Appendix 1 (the “Preferred Supplier”) for the provision set out in recommendation 2 above, for the Contract Award Values included in Appendix 1 (the “Contract Award Value”), for a contract period of three (3) years with the option for extension by a further period of one (1) year.