A report in the online version of the Computer Business Review (CBR) has suggested that the United Kingdom government has signed a major contract with data center services provider
Crown Hosting Data Centres (Crown Hosting). Crown Hosting, established in 2015 is a joint venture between the UK government’s Cabinet Office and Corsham, Wiltshire-based company Ark Data Centres – a company that designs, constructs and operates “the most efficient UK data centers for the public sector, including UK publicly funded, mandated, regulated and previously regulated organizations and charities”. The report suggests that the contract was valued at £500 million ($658.50 million).
Aside from its size the contract was unique in the fact that it was not submitted for ‘competitive tender’. The reason for this is the UK’s impending departure from the European Union (also known as ‘Brixit’) which takes place on March 29, 2019. The government’s rationale for awarding the contract in this fashion was that the requirements of the contract need to be completed by March 16, 2019. These include “provision, installation, maintenance and operation of data center systems; data center LAN services; data center interconnectivity and the provision of data center facilities from at least two separate locations and available in multiple regions”. Crown Hosting won the initial £700 million contract in 2015 which has been extended in their favor.
“A decision has been reached that due to the level of critical national infrastructure (“CNI”), which has been moved into the CHDC data center facilities and the requirement to take the approach which maximizes risk reduction when the contract involves CNI, it is technically necessary to enter into an extension of the Framework Agreement,” suggested a government statement published by CBR. “It would not be sensible or without risk to the disruption of CNI to risk having to move incumbents to a new solution in the next few years. It had not been appreciated the level of CNI that would rely on this solution when the Framework was set up.”
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