Company secures four-year engagement

Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Amazon Web Services has won a four-year hosting deal with the Home Office that could be worth up to £100m.

Details of services covered by the contract are scarce, other than that AWS will be tasked with providing “public cloud hosting services”. It is also understood that the deal represents a continuation of services already delivered to the department.

The contract, which was awarded via the G-Cloud 11 framework, came into effect on 12 December and lasts for four years. This is double the length of what is ordinarily permitted under G-Cloud rules, meaning the Home Office will likely have needed to obtain prior dispensation from the Government Digital Service to award a longer-term deal.

No set value is attached to the engagement, but the department estimates that it could spend as much as £100m with AWS between now and December 2023.

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In 2015 the public cloud giant won a two-year “strategic hosting” deal with the Home Office worth £5.5m. The following year it won a £494,000 18-month support contract while, in 2017, the department awarded the company another two-year hosting contract worth £4.8m.

These are just a few of numerous six- and seven-figure contracts AWS has won from clients in the public sector in recent years – with central government a particularly fertile market for the vendor.

In the last 12 months alone, the company has won a £3.1m deal with the Department for Work and Pensions, a £3.4m contract with the Government Digital Service, and a £20m engagement with HM Revenue and Customs.

AWS has also previously been awarded multimillion-pound deals with the likes of the Ministry of Justice, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and NHS Digital.

Data compiled last year by analyst Tussell found that the Home Office spends more with Amazon than any other public-sector entity. Across 2018, the Home Office spent £15.8m with the firm – more than a third of the total central government figure of £46.9m. HMRC was second on the list with a total annual outlay of £11,1m, ahead of the MoJ on £8.5m.