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Southampton City Council had previously been using Confirm as an on-premise application to manage its highways maintenance programme.  Through integration with PBBI’s MapInfo Professional location intelligence GIS software, the Council was able to pinpoint defects in the road network and associated assets and expedite the necessary repairs.  On taking up the highways contract, Balfour Beatty WorkPlace recognised the value of Confirm, but also wanted to make the maintenance programme more cost-effective.

Balfour Beatty WorkPlace quickly identified that moving to Confirm OnDemand provided an ideal solution. Moving Confirm from an on-premise to on-demand environment has already significantly reduced hardware, implementation and management costs.  This is because Southampton’s Confirm OnDemand system is run as part of a multi-tenanted infrastructure where hardware and management costs are effectively shared between organisations.

Flexible licensing is also an important benefit of Confirm OnDemand.  Entering a five year agreement as the public sector faces unprecedented cutbacks following the Comprehensive Spending Review, Southampton and Balfour Beatty WorkPlace needed an asset management system that was scalable and adaptable to changing requirements. Confirm OnDemand allows user licenses to be increased or reduced as and when required – for example, to facilitate a fixed term project.  This pay-per-use model means that Balfour Beatty WorkPlace and the Council never have to spend money on licenses they don’t need.

Another advantage of Confirm OnDemand enjoyed by Balfour Beatty WorkPlace was the speed of its deployment.  The system was fully operational less than five weeks after contracts were signed, including the physical migration of the on-premise data.  The on-demand model also enables Southampton to easily run test, development and training environments within Confirm, as well as the live environment.  This helps Balfour Beatty WorkPlace’s inspectors to quickly master the software.

“In the current environment, where cost savings are everything, we really value the flexibility of Confirm OnDemand,” said Nigel Gibbons, Head of ICT at Balfour Beatty WorkPlace.  “The on-demand environment significantly reduces our capex and enables us to concentrate on the practical benefits that Confirm delivers, rather than diverting valuable man-hours on management and support of the software.  The ability to scale our user licences as and when required also means that we have much tighter control over our ongoing spend.”