The Regional District of Nanaimo committee of the whole is recommending approval of a software licensing deal with Microsoft.
An enterprise agreement between the two parties is set to end on June 16 and regional district directors voted to enter into another three-year deal at a meeting Tuesday night – final approval could come at the board meeting on May 24.
The deal would see the regional district paying a yearly fee of $102,237.
A staff report said signing a new deal would allow the regional district to upgrade to the most current versions of software at an affordable rate.
Renewal would net the regional district an average of $150,236 in savings a year, it said.
Microsoft is a standard corporate product used by most local governments and large businesses, said Joan Harrison, regional district director of corporate services.
“Other non-Microsoft applications such as the RDN financial system, property-based information system and geographic information system, run on top of and require Microsoft server database systems,” Harrison said.
Notable Microsoft products used by the regional district include the Microsoft Office suite – Word, Excel, Outlook and Publisher – as well as numerous servers.
The money would come from operational budgets of various regional district departments.