We ended the first edition with a door closing. Harris Health's ServiceNow spend appeared to have moved to a new paper after its old vehicle lapsed, and we said the next date was December 10. This week we looked for the rest of the money still transacting on dead contracts, because that's where re-procurement decisions get made without anyone posting a solicitation. We found more of it than we expected, and most of it is ServiceNow and VMware, and most of it flows through one reseller.

Two program notes before the entries. The Microsoft successor solicitation slipped again. DIR's schedule now lists Pre-COOP2025SOL-00006 with a tentative release of August 2026; we last checked in July 2026, and August has six days left. And a new pre-solicitation appeared that deserves your attention if you sell hardware. Both are on the watch list at the bottom.

Last edition we told you Parkland's Workday implementation rides the PTG vehicle with the December 10 term date. Here's the other half of the account. Parkland reported $11.8M of ServiceNow spend through Carahsoft in FY2026 through May. That's more than double the $5.7M it reported in all of FY2025, and the purchases still reference DIR-CPO-4444, a vehicle whose term ended January 23, 2025. DIR's own page says so plainly. So the spend doubled after the paper died, the last order we can see is March 2026, and no public solicitation was found as of August 3, 2026. A re-procurement decision is being made in there somewhere, at full speed, and nobody outside the building is being asked.

A smaller version we flagged last time, now with a fuller picture. Harris County has put $32.2M through Carahsoft since FY2022, mostly VMware, and reported another $2.2M in FY2026 through May on DIR-TSO-4288, which DIR lists as no longer active; its term ended May 22, 2025. Fifteen months of purchasing on a dead vehicle is not a scandal; it's how trailing sales reports and quiet migrations look. It is also a decision waiting to be formalized. Carahsoft's successor software vehicle exists (more on it below), and whether the county's VMware money lands there is the actual recompete.

Same buyer as last edition's ServiceNow migration, different product, opposite signal. Harris Health reported $4.0M of VMware spend through Carahsoft in FY2025 and $5,952 in FY2026 through May. That's not a typo. This looks like churn, or like a reporting lag, and the data can't tell them apart yet. Vendor sales reports run about two months behind, so we'll say it carefully. Almost nothing has been reported this fiscal year. If you displaced VMware at Harris Health, congratulations, and if you're the incumbent's account team, we'd want to know why this line went quiet.

DFW's Salesforce spend through Carahsoft ($12.2M since FY2022, $3.8M in FY2026 through May) also still references the dead DIR-TSO-4288. Same story as Harris County, different product. Meanwhile, the airport's Microsoft licensing through SHI, $4.9M in FY2025 and $1.8M so far this year, rides DIR-CPO-4875, which DIR titles "Cybersecurity Software Products and Related Services." We went back and checked that on DIR's own page. Microsoft licenses on cybersecurity paper. (Sure. Why not.) DIR has already exercised the automatic renewal on that one, and the current term ends January 25, 2027. No public solicitation found on the entity side as of August 3, 2026.

The biggest relationship we haven't covered yet. Dallas has put $48.4M through Carahsoft since FY2022, $17.3M of it in FY2025, and it's at $12.9M for FY2026 through May with three months still to report. The spend now rides DIR-CPO-5687, Carahsoft's current software vehicle, the successor paper for a lot of what used to live on TSO-4288. Its current term ends May 19, 2027, and renewal options could extend to May 19, 2031. Read that renewal window again. If DIR keeps exercising options, this paper outlives most sales careers. The date that matters is the term date, and the decision it forces is DIR's, not Dallas's.

Austin's version of the same relationship. $27.7M through Carahsoft across FY2022 to FY2025, another $3.5M in FY2026 through May, now on the same DIR-CPO-5687 with the same May 19, 2027 term date and the same options to 2031. A detail from the archive we enjoyed: for years Austin's VMware buys were reported under a vehicle titled "Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Recovery Products and Related Services." An emergency is one way to describe a hypervisor renewal, we suppose. The current paper says software, which is progress.

San Antonio has spent $33.7M through Carahsoft since FY2022, and the brand behind most of it is Granicus, the govtech communications and meetings platform. $10.8M in FY2025 alone, $3.5M in FY2026 through May, last order in April. The paper is DIR-CPO-5175, Carahsoft's cloud services vehicle. DIR has already exercised the automatic renewal on it once; the current term ends July 24, 2027, and renewal options could extend to July 24, 2028. The short runway is the point, to us. Unlike the software vehicle above, this one runs out of options in 2028, so its term date carries real weight.

Three relationships share a term date of April 4, 2027, and all of it is branded paper. Austin's Adobe licensing through Dell ($35.0M since FY2022, $6.4M in FY2026 through May), San Antonio's Planview spend through Dell ($24.6M since FY2022), and Austin Energy's VMware buys through Dell ($32.5M since FY2022) all ride DIR-CPO-5792, the Dell-branded vehicle, current term ending April 4, 2027 with options to 2030. That date matters more than it looks to us, because DIR is done making branded contracts and there will never be a successor Dell vehicle. What just appeared instead is a pre-solicitation for an IT hardware category covering desktops, laptops, and tablets, tentative release September 2026. If you sell against Dell in these accounts, that category paper is the opening. If you are Dell, it's the fight you can't sit out.

Austin also has $15.8M of Oracle spend since FY2022, $2.9M reported in FY2026 through May, on DIR-CPO-5439, Oracle's own branded vehicle. Its term ends April 4, 2027, too, with options to 2030, and the same no-successor rule applies. San Antonio's Oracle money, as we covered last edition, is still moving on a vehicle that ended in October 2024. Between the two cities, Oracle in central and south Texas is one migration already done quietly and one branded vehicle with a term date and no heir. The second one is the story we expect to write next year.

The Microsoft cluster from last edition has two more members worth naming. Tarrant County showed up in this data in FY2025 with $4.7M through SHI and has reported $2.1M in FY2026 through May, on the same DIR-CPO-5237 as Harris County and Houston, same September 22, 2027 term date, same options to 2029. JPS Health Network, Tarrant County's public hospital district, is the odd one out. Its $4.0M of FY2025 Microsoft spend through SHI now references DIR-CPO-5094, which DIR titles "Miscellaneous IT Hardware Peripherals, Components, and Related Services," renewed through January 30, 2027. Only $138,000 reported this fiscal year through May; last order April. Slowdown, lag, or churn, we can't tell yet, and we said the same about Harris Health above. When the pattern repeats, we'll name it.

The spend figures come from DIR's Cooperative Contract vendor sales reports on the Texas Open Data Portal, with FY2026 reports through May 2026. Texas fiscal years run September through August, and vendor sales reports lag about two months, so "no reported spend" can mean churn or lag. Vehicle status, term dates, and expiration dates were checked on each contract's own page at dir.texas.gov on August 25, 2026. The dates above are purchasing-vehicle term dates, not any single buyer's engagement dates. A term end forces a decision (renew, migrate, or re-solicit), and DIR can renew without a new solicitation, so no date here guarantees an RFP. Entity-side procurement portals and board agendas were last swept August 3, 2026; "no public solicitation found" means none was visible then, not that none exists. When we get something wrong, the correction runs at the top of the next edition.

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