Exclusive Software used to cost the University of Oxford's Covid vaccine research has become the subject of an end-of-life announcement from enterprise application developer Unit4.

The Research Costing and Pricing (RCP) solution, used by as many as 35 UK universities, was first conceived by Oxford and Cambridge Universities before being developed commercially.

One insider told The Register some users had spent as much as £1 million ($1.29 million) deploying and supporting the system, and customizing it to their own requirements.

Unit4 announced the decision in April, saying it would not support the product after the end of 2026, angering many users. Users face a migration to alternative products including Worktribe and GrantsNow, with which Unit4 has established a strategic partnership.

In a statement, a Unit4 spokesperson said: "We have not taken the decision lightly to implement our Cloud Migration strategy and Unit4 is committed to working with all our customers on their journey to the cloud. We recognize this is not something that will happen overnight, which is why we have laid out clear options for customers to manage the transition."

The spokesperson said Unit4 was offering a free Cloud Migration Assessment service to help customers "identify the appropriate journey to the cloud based on their current levels of customization and complexity." This would map out the migration path, they said.

"Long term, we believe this approach, and the move to the cloud, will deliver benefits to our customers as they look to transform services to compete in much more dynamic and unpredictable market conditions," the spokesperson added.

In a communication seen by The Register, Unit4 told customers that following its Special Interest Group conference in June 2023, it had announced it would "continue to support RCP around statutory changes, but would not be delivering any new innovation within the product."

The April missive said: "Following a strategic review of the RCP product, we are announcing the end-of-life for RCP with effect from 31st December, 2026, which includes all on-premises and cloud versions of RCP."

It said some ERP customers in higher education had already moved to, or were in talks with, Worktribe and GrantsNow. "With our cloud platform integration capabilities, Unit4 has decided to focus on integration with these specialist providers who are solely focused on driving innovation within the higher education research space," the communication said.

One insider said that as well as the migration costs and efforts to recreate customization in the new products, users might have to deploy tools that fail to produce the accuracy and granularity of research costing afforded by RCP. The outcome would either be to risk footing the bill if the bid is too low for grants, or missing out on funding money if the bid is too high.

RCP was created more than 10 years ago with the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. The Register understands that Cambridge has now moved off the product, but Oxford remains dependent on it.

We understand the planning for Oxford University's research supporting the development of the first licensed vaccine for Covid-19 with AstraZeneca was performed using Unit 4's RCP solution. We have approached the university for comment. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/22/unit4_ends_support_for_research/