As with the incumbent version, the new iteration of flagship cloud contract will feature a fourth lot focused on areas such as planning, migration, testing and ongoing support and training
An estimated £7.5bn of business is up for grabs as the Crown Commercial Service has opened bidding on the 14th iteration of the G-Cloud framework.
The estimated worth of the agreement across its four lots represents a 50% hike on the £5bn value attached to the incumbent version of the cloud-services deal.
G-Cloud 13 was the first iteration of the buying vehicle to feature a fourth lot – focused on areas such as migration and set-up services, in addition to the long-standing trio of cloud hosting, software, and support. This expanded model will be replicated for the incoming new version.
As with the previous bidding process, the final lot is being tendered and awarded separately, and its projected value remains at £1bn.
The contract notice said: “Lot 4 is designed for customers to further compete their requirements for cloud support services to help them transition to cloud software or hosting services.”
Suppliers wishing to gain a place on this segment must be able to offer services across all of six specified areas: planning; set-up and migration; security; quality assurance and performance testing; training; and ongoing support.
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The first of the three lots – which will be awarded via a single bidding process – is, once again, dedicated to cloud hosting, comprising services “cloud platform or infrastructure services that can help [public bodies]… deploy, manage and run software; [and] provision and use processing, storage or networking resources”.
The second lot, focused on cloud software, includes “applications that are accessed over the internet and hosted in the cloud”.
The third and final lot is cloud support and will feature “cloud support Services [that]… help buyers set up and maintain their cloud software or hosting”.
Between them, the first three lots are expected to be worth a cumulative total of £6.5bn to the chosen providers.
Biding for the first three lots is open until 7 May, while the fourth lot is accepting bids until 27 March. All four sections of the framework are slated to come into effect on 29 October – only 10 days before the G-Cloud 13 agreement is due to expire.
The current iteration of G-Cloud, which has been extended to a term of two years, features 5,006 suppliers.
The new version will be implemented for an initial timeframe of 18 months, and will allow public-sector buyers to award call-off contracts of up to three years in length, plus a further one-year extension.
