The central body, which is to be dissolved, has created a single vehicle to serve all its cloud hosting needs via a single firm that works with all major vendors

NHS England has signed a £500m-plus deal to cover its cloud hosting needs over a potential term of five years.

The deal – awarded to IT reseller Softcat – came into effect on 21 March. The Buckinghamshire-headquartered company has been a key cloud partner to the NHS form some time, having provided consolidated “public cloud cost management services” via a multimillion-pound deal first signed in 2019.

It will last for an initial term of three years, and can be extended for a further 24 months, if the NHS so chooses. However, by the end of the opening three-year term the government’s intent is that NHS England will have been dissolved, with all existing functions integrated into the Department of Health and Social Care.

In the meantime, Softcat will serve as the central health service body’s “Cloud Services Delivery Partner” (CSDP), according to a newly published contract notice. This will involve “the provision of cloud-hosted services across multiple platforms”.

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According to previously published commercial pipeline data, the intention in identifying a CSDP and appointing the chosen firm to an overarching agreement was to create a “contract combining several inherited commercial arrangements into an aligned, single multi-year agreement”.

The deal that has ultimately been put in place is valued at £528m, inclusive of VAT. But the notice adds that this figure is “not committed spend, but a maximum contract value, as the contract operates on a consumption-based model for expenditure across multiple cloud providers”.

The pipeline information suggests that these will largely be comprised of the big two cloud providers of Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. Softcat, one of the UK’s biggest tech resellers, holds partnerships with both vendors.

NHS England declined to comment and Softcat had yet to respond at going to press.