In a budget-busting leap from SAP to Oracle, West Sussex County Council is trebling its raid on capital assets such as buildings to fund its “transformational” ERP project.

The current budget for the authority’s long-running project is £27 million, more than ten times the £2.6 million originally budgeted when it started nearly seven years ago.

Last year, it was reported that the council was using money from selling off capital assets – including a former fire station – to fund the massively expanded budget. Although allowed by central government since 2016, the approach should not be used to relieve ongoing budget pressure, experts have warned.

In documents released to a council committee last week, officials said they expected use of funds from the sell-off to triple in the current financial year compared to a year earlier.

“Following a review of the 2025/26 plan, it is now currently projected that the council will use £12 million of this flexibility on qualifying transformation expenditure. However, the exact amount will not be known until the end of the financial year,” the report to the Performance and Finance Scrutiny Committee said.

In 2024/25, the council used £4 million in capital receipts to pay for its Oracle project, which it originally imagined would go live in March 2021. Officials expect the project to spend around £10 million in the 2026/27 financial year, with £4.3 million coming from capital receipts, and £5.6 million from one-off funding allocated to an IT infrastructure reserve.

An earlier estimate suggested the council might need to apply capital receipts of up to £20 million in 2025/26, with Oracle being “one major project likely to qualify.” The previous year saw £5.5 million set aside for the project from the unusual, one-off funding mechanism. Capital receipts are typically used to fund other capital projects such as schools and infrastructure rather than IT implementations and SaaS.

The council argues that selling property to fund an IT project, which would ordinarily be paid for using ongoing revenue, is justified because long-term savings are expected through “automation and enabling more tasks to be undertaken via self-service,” according to a council report from January last year.

Local council taxpayers will hope this is the case. However, the project has already confounded expectations. A report to the committee in 2024 said that in November 2019, the authority agreed a budget of £2.6 million, but later decided it needed more suppliers to help change business processes and reset the budget to £14.07 million, including £7 million in March 2021 and £7.07 million in October 2022.

In a separate report to the council last month, the project team said the current approved budget is £27 million, based on a program of up to three years from May 2024, with finance, procurement, HR, and payroll live by April 2026, including six months of post-implementation support.

However, the £27 million figure does not appear to include spending on the project before May 2024. Systems integrator DXC began working with the council on the project under a five-year, £4 million contract in May 2020. Auditors EY later said there were “weaknesses regarding budgeting, governance and risk management.”

In July 2023, the council found there was no real prospect of a deliverable plan being agreed. It terminated the agreement with DXC on 1 September 2023 despite the company winning a lucrative contract variation. Published data detailing council spending shows that throughout its period working with the council on the project, DXC was paid around £6.6 million, more than 50 percent above the original contract price.

In a statement, a spokesperson said:

“We generate capital receipts from the sale of assets and routinely sell assets that we no longer have an operational use for. West Sussex County Council has made a financial choice to use the receipts available to help fund the implementation of Oracle.

“The total estimated cost for the programme is approximately £41million. This is comprised of the initial £14.07 million spent during the earlier phases and the current approved budget of £27.048 million for the programme’s completion.”

Birmingham City Council’s SAP-to-Oracle project is set to cost £144.4 million – more than seven times earlier estimates – as it waits for a fully functioning system five years after its planned go-live date.

Keen readers will know the sorry saga of the ERP disaster at Europe’s largest local authority. For the uninitiated, highlights include going live with a system unfit to manage the council’s £3 billion in taxpayer revenue and multibillion-pound spending budget; a decision to turn off audits for fraud detection for more than 18 months; allocating £2 billion in transactions to the wrong year; and multiple delays and overspending.

Pertaining to the last item on this list of shame, Birmingham City Council has released new figures. In a written response published with its council meeting this week, officials said the total forecast cost of the program up to the 2027/28 financial year is £144.4 million, up from an initial estimate of £19 million with a £1 million contingency. In 2024, the total budget approved across financial years 2018/19 to 2025/26 was £131 million.

The project began in 2018, when the council planned to move away from its legacy R/3 SAP system to more modern software. Having picked Oracle Fusion, it initially planned to go live in December 2020 for finance and procurement, and in February 2021 for HR and payroll. According to a 2021 business case, this was re-planned with a revised launch in April 2022 for both functions.

Having hit the project milestone, things went from bad to worse. Although the council had planned to implement Oracle “out-of-the-box,” it created several customisations including a banking reconciliation system that failed to function properly. The council struggled to understand its cash position and was unable to produce auditable accounts. It has spent more than £5 million on manual workaround labour.

The Oracle implementation – along with poor management of equal pay cases – led to the council becoming effectively bankrupt in 2023.

The council has now bought a third-party solution to cover the banking reconciliation function, and is reimplementing Oracle from scratch, a project that was due to go live in April, and has now been delayed by several months.

The mushrooming cost of the project also needs to take into account the fact that schools have been removed from its scope, a move that might have led to reduced costs.

Nor does ballooning spending reflect how much the authority might be out of pocket in total. The initial project had banked expected savings in the millions from the 2022 go-live date. Anticipated savings of £69 million in 2023/24 were written off. In 2024, investigators put the total money lost at £216.5 million, which might climb by £10 million or so, given the new cost projection.

At around £225 million, the money lost equates to about £200 per person within the council’s boundaries.

The Bank of England has trebled the amount it is spending on its Oracle systems integrator amid efforts to migrate business applications to the cloud.

The UK’s central bank has planned the move since 2020, and a recent procurement note revealed it has increased financial outlay with Oracle implementation partner Version 1 to £21.5 million after initially tendering the contract for £7 million.

Version 1 was hired to “support the implementation of technical and change management aspects of the Oracle Cloud implementation and business change program,” according to the official documents.

The latest increase is due to an amendment to the Bank’s Application Management Service contract, including the “need for additional works, services or supplies” that “were not included in the initial procurement,” the notice says.

Another supplier could not meet these requirements for “economic or technical reasons such as requirements of interchangeability or interoperability with existing equipment, services or installations.” Any change in supplier might also “cause significant inconvenience or substantial duplication of costs,” it adds.

The latest increase is the second time the 330-year-old institution has upped the contract value. The procurement was first advertised for £7 million in 2022, and, after a competition, it was awarded to Version 1 for £8.7 million in September 2023.

In February last year, that figure was inflated to £13.8 million, with the bulk of the increase attributed to “amended implementation methodology, from a two-phase approach, to a multiple-phase approach with Oracle Modules going live based on the Bank’s priorities.”

At the time, a spokesperson said: “The Bank is implementing Oracle Cloud to consolidate several different systems which will help the Bank fulfil its mission. We aim to achieve value for money in all our procurement.”

The Bank of England is a public body that raises money regulating institutions, printing banknotes, banking services, management fees charged to government agencies, and investments built up over 300 years. It generates more income than it spends and contributes millions of pounds to the UK Treasury.

According to training provider Fudgelearn, the Bank of England is implementing Oracle Cloud SaaS Fusion Applications, including Finance, Procurement, Projects, Expenses, EPM, and Reporting.

The contract is “intended to deliver a step change in the capabilities and value delivered by the finance, procurement and recruitment functions in the Bank, leveraging the existing Oracle Cloud tool set to drive sustainable business change.”

Last week, the bank also awarded Oracle a £13 million contract to provide technical support for Oracle SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

In June 2025, the BoE said it would increase the maximum spending of a framework deal for a raft of services, including support for its complex configuration of SAP, “in particular Business Warehouse” and interoperability between multi-cloud environments and on-prem and shared datacenters. The maximum value of the arrangement was set at £60 million when it was awarded in September 2024. It was then increased to £86.7 million in a non-competitive award.

Birmingham City Council’s doom laden Oracle finance and IT project – now four years behind schedule – has been delayed to at least the summer, it has been revealed.

The project, supposed to provide the council with a gold-standard finance, procurement and IT service fit for the 21st century, has been dogged with huge delays and soaring costs.

It was a critical cause of the council going bust, after costs rocketed in the wake of a catastrophic failed first attempt at ‘go live’ in 2022.

Now the council has had to confirm it faces another major delay. It says it needs more time to carry out testing and ensure the suite of services is fully functioning before it goes live.

Staff have been told the hoped for new go-live is end of July, but that it could be the autumn. Insiders have said the continued delays and obfuscation were troubling, especially given the huge focus being put on it.

The project has had a dedicated, £1,100 a day commissioner overseeing it for more than two years, Myron Hyrck, who was brought in specifically because of his prior knowledge of Oracle projects like it, while more than 90 external consultants were said to be working on the scheme – yet it was still facing significant problems. The project is currently managed by Philip Macpherson.

Originally said to cost less than £20 million and trigger millions in savings a year by being more ‘efficient’, the project has rocketed exponentially in cost and is now said to have run up bills to date of £171 million. The council had not confirmed that at the time of writing.

The council also claimed the delay would not cost more as a contingency budget – agreed last year of £40m – was already in place and had sufficient funds to meet costs.

In September, it was reported that a vital component of the project – the income management system that ensures that the thousands of payments in and out of the council every week match up with bank records – had been delayed three times. Whistleblowers said that the whole project was ‘a mess’.

As a result, the council called an extraordinary meeting to discuss the failed project. It did not at that time say the go-live of April was in jeopardy.

Sources have said that the mental health impact on staff working in the finance and digital teams had been considerable because of pressures linked to the delayed project. Repeated delays had further damaged morale, especially given the rapid turnover of staff involved in it. The continued failure to have clear deadlines was causing additional stress, they said.

In a statement the council said: “Following a review as part of the ongoing programme management it has been decided to continue on with testing of the reimplementation of the Oracle system. The council’s HR, finance and procurement programme, known as Brindley, will now have a go live date later on in 2026 and not as originally anticipated in April.”

Cllr Saima Suleman, Labour Cabinet Member for Digital, Culture, Heritage and Tourism, has previously been criticised for not having the technical expertise to properly hold the project leaders to account.

She backed the delay saying: “This decision reflects the council’s focus on ensuring that the reimplementation goes smoothly and the programme is successful – prioritising readiness and stability over fixed dates. There is no impact on the running of the current system and services will continue to function as they are now, with colleagues and suppliers still being paid.

“The Brindley programme’s budget included a contingency to accommodate for eventualities such as this. Therefore, this is not adding further cost into the existing budget.

“The council is taking a staged approach to the reimplementation, with independent assurance at agreed checkpoints. We will continue to test whether we are progressing as expected and meeting all the milestones required, as we recognise the importance of getting this programme right.”

Council opposition leader Cllr Robert Alden, Cons, Erdington, said: “Once again, the council’s botched IT rollout is having to be delayed.

Brazil’s Council for Economic Defense (CADE) has officially launched an “Administrative Inquiry” into Microsoft’s cloud computing and software licensing practices.

As reported by Valor Economico, the investigation commenced at the start of this year.

In a technical note shared by CADE on January 2, the department noted that the investigation is based on the recent findings of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which concluded that “the licensing practices adopted by Microsoft have produced significant negative effects on the competitive capacity of its rivals, mainly Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google, to offer cloud computing services, especially in the segment of clients whose workloads depend on Microsoft software as an ‘essential input.'”

CADE adds that while the CMA’s investigation focused on the European economic area and the UK, the “possibility of the same reality occurring in Brazil must be investigated.”

“It is observed that the enterprise software and cloud computing markets exhibit globalised dynamics, with homogeneous technical standards, business models, and supply structures across jurisdictions. Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud operate in Brazil with global licensing policies, technological architecture, and commercial strategies similar to those analysed by the CMA. Thus, restrictive practices identified in the United Kingdom tend to be replicated in the Brazilian market, reproducing similar anti-competitive effects.”

The CMA’s investigation concluded in July of this year, finding that both AWS and Microsoft merited further investigation into whether they hold “strategic market status.” Those SMS probes were previously said to be expected to conclude in early 2026.

With CADE deciding to begin the probe, Microsoft has until January 12 to answer a questionnaire setting out various details of its current licensing practices.

The CMA investigation is not the sole investigation Microsoft has faced. Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) previously launched a probe into the company, though this has since been resolved. In the US, the company is seeing similar discussions with the Federal Trade Commission.

Microsoft operates two cloud regions in Brazil: one in Rio and another in São Paulo. In September 2024, the company said it would invest $2.7bn in expanding its cloud infrastructure in the country.

Microsoft is fighting a massive £2.1 billion lawsuit in the UK that accuses the tech giant of using its Windows Server software to tilt the cloud computing market in its favour. The case, which could reshape how software licensing works in the cloud era, alleges Microsoft has been systematically overcharging thousands of British businesses that run Windows Server on rival platforms like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.

The lawsuit landed at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal this week, with competition lawyer Maria Luisa Stasi arguing on behalf of nearly 60,000 businesses that Microsoft’s pricing practices create an uneven playing field. According to court filings, companies using Windows Server on competing cloud services face higher licensing fees than those running the same software on Microsoft’s own Azure platform. That’s not exactly subtle, it’s like charging more for gasoline if you’re not filling up at the company’s own stations.

Here’s the thing: Stasi’s legal team claims this isn’t just about pricing. They argue Microsoft intentionally “degrades the user experience of Windows Server” on rival clouds as part of what they call “a coherent abusive strategy to leverage Microsoft’s dominant position.”

Microsoft, unsurprisingly, wants the case thrown out. The company argues that Stasi’s legal team hasn’t provided a proper framework for calculating alleged losses and maintains that its vertically integrated business model – where it both licenses Windows Server to competitors and uses it as a foundation for Azure, actually benefits competition. A Microsoft spokesperson reportedly pointed to what they called “the reality of a sector that has never been so dynamic and competitive.”

This legal battle comes at an awkward time for Microsoft, which just announced a $23 billion global investment plan earlier this week to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure. The company’s cloud business has been growing rapidly, with Azure competing fiercely against AWS and Google Cloud in a market that generated $90 billion in revenue just in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have been watching Microsoft’s cloud practices closely. Back in July, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority released a report concluding that Microsoft’s licensing rules “materially disadvantaged AWS and Google” by making it more costly or less efficient for customers to run key software elsewhere. European regulators have also been examining whether cloud giants have amassed too much influence, with concerns ranging from data portability to restrictive licensing.

At £2.1 billion (about $2.8 billion), it represents a significant collective action against a tech company in the UK. And it arrives as cloud computing transitions from being a nice-to-have utility to the essential infrastructure powering everything from AI development to enterprise software.

If the tribunal allows the case to proceed, it could force Microsoft to fundamentally rethink how it licenses Windows Server in cloud environments. More broadly, it might set precedents for how dominant software companies can leverage their existing products to gain advantage in new markets. For the thousands of UK businesses caught in the middle, the outcome could mean huge refunds or confirmation that they’ll need to factor these pricing disparities into their cloud strategy moving forward.

The hearing continues at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, with a decision on whether to certify the case expected in the coming weeks. Either way, the cloud computing wars just got a lot more expensive.

UK SAP users say licensing and pricing complexity is muddying the picture for Business Suite, the vendor’s new model for cloud applications.

Confusion over Business Suite’s reboot for the cloud is also creating difficulties in preparing business cases necessary to migrate from legacy systems, said Conor Riordan, chair of the UK and Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG).

In a survey of members, UKISUG found only 27 percent were familiar with the reimagined SAP Business Suite, introduced in February with the promise of a “truly modular, composable” set of business applications, including ERP, HR, CRM, supply chain, and expense management. SAP said the applications in the suite would share the same data model and user experience after years of integrating disparate software, some from acquisitions.

At the same time, UK SAP users were asked to identify aspects of Business Suite they felt uninformed about, or that they needed more information on. Licensing and pricing models was the top issue, cited by 61 percent of respondents.

Earlier this year, the German-speaking SAP user group, DSAG, called for greater transparency in licensing to enable the migration and upgrade of on-prem systems to the cloud, saying inconsistencies were making the transition more challenging than it could be.

In April, SAP scrapped its RISE package and introduced SAP Cloud ERP Private, priced under a new Full Use Equivalent (FUE) metric.

The original incarnation of Business Suite was launched in 2006 and includes the legacy ERP application ECC6. In September, DSAG said the reboot would continue to cause difficulties over licensing models.

Riordan said there was confusion over the difference between Business Suite and S/4HANA, SAP’s most up-to-date ERP offering.

“We just need to simplify the story, communicate the roadmap in the business case… [be] more clear, more transparent, so that as our members go to their boards to get the money approved to do this work, it’s just an easier story to tell about what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it, how much it’s going to cost, and what the return on investment is,” he said.

Many users remain on legacy ERP platform ECC and are struggling to make the case to move to S/4HANA, which requires a complete business transformation. Analyst Gartner has said that approximately 39 percent of worldwide ECC customers – from a total of 35,000 – had bought or subscribed to licenses to start their transition to S/4HANA, a platform first launched in 2015. Separate research from Freeform Dynamics found that 95 percent of legacy users say building a positive case to migrate requires a big effort or is genuinely challenging.

Mainstream support for ECC ends in 2027, while extended support is available until the end of 2030 at a 2 percent premium. Typically, an ERP transformation in a large international organisation might take three years.

“The feedback we’re getting from members is that there’s still a big struggle on the business case. Users are asking us ‘How do you tell the story? What’s the value of doing what we’re doing?'” Riordan said.

“When you’re going from ECC to public cloud or private cloud, or whatever you’re going to do, it’s typically a multi-step process, and the value often comes at the end run, or in the middle, and a lot of the cost is at the beginning, because you’re doing the migration and the upgrade. It’s being able to tell that complete story and put an investment package together. Members are still saying that it’s a difficult story to tell.”

SAP has said it is committed to guiding and supporting customers at every step of their move to “integrated, cloud-powered operational excellence.”

“The SAP Cloud ERP Private Edition package is not just a solution; it is a gateway to a future of limitless potential and unprecedented business agility,” the company said.

It also said licensing changes do “not mean a direct increase or decrease in cost.”