Crown Commercial Service signs MoU with UKCloud

The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with UKCloud to deliver cloud services at preferential terms to the public sector.

Gareth Rhys Williams, the government’s chief commercial officer, said the agreement builds on the government’s Cloud First policy and incorporates key elements of the recent One Government Cloud Strategy review.

“It shows the government’s determination to adopt value for money technologies which improve services and ensure government departments and their staff have the digital tools they need, now and in the future,” he said.

In a statement UKCloud said the MoU provides the public sector with a choice and options of multi-cloud alongside the more proprietary options available from cloud providers.

Crown Campus

It added that the agreement signals renewed support for the government’s Crown Campus – secure UK datacentre facilities operated as a joint venture between Ark Data Centres and the UK government.

UKCloud is the only cloud services provider involved in the One Government Cloud Strategy to operate within the Crown Campus. This enables UKCloud to offer native connectivity to secure government networks and options for the delivery of multi-cloud services at higher classification levels.

As part of this agreement, Crown Commercial Service has negotiated  double-digit discounts related to UKCloud’s Tier 2 cloud hosting capability, branded UKCloudX.

“CCS provides commercial agreements which help organisations across the entire public sector save time and money on buying everyday goods and services,” said Simon Tse, chief executive, CCS. “This agreement with UKCloud provides value for public sector organisations as they work to transform essential services for UK citizens.”

Social value

UKCloud’s recent State of Cloud Adoption survey found that 83 percent of public sector respondents said that lack of skills and resources is impeding their adoption of cloud.

The firm said this latest agreement ensures it will implement future additional discounts as government spend on its multi-cloud services meets agreed thresholds.

In addition, it said the MoU recognises “the social value of British technology companies in the public sector supply chain.” UKCloud said it has pulled together a community of more than 300 GovTech providers, including most of the large primes and system integrators, and many UK small-to-medium sized enterprises. These create social value through investment in jobs, skills and contributing to the Treasury directly and indirectly. The agreement formalises UKCloud’s commitment to pay all taxes due without the practice of tax avoidance.

The agreement also includes enhanced commercial terms in support of the government’s COVID Secure intuitive.

This includes a discount on UKCloud’s recently launched Desktop-as-a-Service offering with VMware Horizon. COVID Secure recognises that social distancing measures will be required for some time and UKCloud’s service provides “a safe, sustainable and affordable alternative to the interim solutions that many public sector organisations will have implemented in the early stages of lockdown.”

Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud said, “We have been delighted to work with Crown Commercial Service and the Cabinet Office to emphasise the need for choice, high assurance and expert support services to underpin the UK’s One Government Cloud Strategy.”

Google Cloud

Earlier this month the CCS announced it had negotiated a new MoU to make it easier and more affordable for public sector organisations to use Google Cloud’s services.

The agreement allows users to advantage of technologies across the range of Google Cloud’s services and enterprise grade cloud solutions at a discounted rate. These include services for infrastructure, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), application modernisation, development, and collaboration solutions.

Public sector organisations can also use Google’s multi-cloud management platform, Anthos.