Department awards potential £40,000 deal that could provide scores of officials with an alternative video meeting platform in the event that the widely used Microsoft tool is out of action
The Home Office has signed a near-£40,000 deal for the provision of enterprise-grade video technology from Google – to provide an alternative option for officials to hold meetings if Microsoft Teams systems are ever inaccessible.
The contract was awarded a month after millions of Microsoft users around the world – including in the UK public sector – were impacted by a major outage, caused by a faulty update made by security firm CrowdStrike.
As of the start of this week, the Home Office entered into an initial one-year agreement with Netpremacy – a Leeds-headquartered firm that specialises in reselling and supporting Google products and services. The accompanying procurement notice indicates that the engagement covers the provision of Google Meet technology, and is intended to ensure that the department has “business continuity for virtual meetings”.
Related content
- EXCL: Cabinet Office terminates £9m Microsoft migration contract – but still plans switch from Google to M365
- DSIT reveals £1m post-DCMS roadmap to move users’ IT from Google to Microsoft
- DWP signs £170k deal for Microsoft Teams training
The text of the contract adds that the deal addresses the “procurement of licences, services, and support to provide a business continuity solution for conferencing in the event the Home Office’s Microsoft Teams service is unavailable, due to either internal or external factors”.
A little over £25,000 will be spent via the contract during its 12-month term – plus a potential additional £6,000 if the department decides to activate an optional extension of a further year. Once VAT is included, the total value could rise to about £37,500.
Based on the initial year-one spending – and depending on how much of the contract’s worth is accounted for by support services – the deal would cover up to about 90 licences for Google technology, based on pricing documents on government’s Digital Marketplace.
Google Meet forms part of the tech giant’s wider Workspace suite of business products, which also includes email, messaging, and storage applications.
