Ross Wilkers
Microsoft and Santa Clara County, Calif. have signed an enterprise software license agreement for the company’s Office 365 cloud-based platform, the company announced Wednesday.
The company said it won the $3.6 million-per year deal through a competitive bidding process and the county said its previous license agreement cost $3.3 million per year.
Goals of this partnership include providing workers connectivity with each other from any location and device, said Stuart McKee, Microsoft’s chief technology officer for U.S. state and local government.
County Chief Information Officer Joyce Wing said this new agreement doubles the number of county employees covered from a previous licensing agreement.
Santa Clara County has 15,000 employees across 26 agencies and departments.
As part of the agreement, Microsoft will help the county update and consolidate its email systems as well as provide 36 new products for areas including productivity, unified communications, collaboration and visibility into information technology assets.
New products include Office 365, Microsoft Lync, and UC/Collaboration, the company said.
County employees, many of them remote, will access documents using several mobile devices and share those documents with other workers.
The county maintains a public hospital and health system; tax collection; social services; law enforcement; judicial department; public roads and airports; an electoral board; and urban-based and mountain-based open spaces.
Microsoft is partnering with the New York Police Department to give public safety agencies a system for collecting and analyzing public safety data.
