The NHS Connecting for Health website has a press release about their new £21.8m agreement with infrastructure and software services supplier Novell. It says that ‘the new agreement will save the NHS up to £75 million over three years compared to previous arrangements’ and that it ‘reduces the barriers for the NHS in using Open Source, as it secures access to an enterprise class Open Source platform along with, more importantly, affordable support, maintenance and training to help our NHS staff make the transition’.

Further details on the agreement and comments from Richard Granger can be found in the press release

What this will actually mean in practice remains to be seen; the release has little real detail and seems to be pure marketing-speak.