Bristol City Council to migrate IT infrastructure to the cloud in £1.5m deal

Bristol City Council's IT services procured via the government's G-Cloud framework

Bristol City Council is planning to migrate its IT infrastructure to the cloud with the help of IT services firm Eduserv in a deal worth £1.5m over two years.

The services were one of an increasing number procured through the government's G-Cloud framework, reducing the cost of the procurement process and generally cutting prices for public-sector organisations.

Eduserv said that it would take over the day-to-day management of the council's IT estate and use its cloud migration services to support the transformation programme.

The move to a cloud infrastructure is a way to reduce costs while continuing to deliver a good level of service to citizens, according to Steve Pendleton, service manager of commissioning and supplier relationship management at Bristol City Council.

"Like every council, we are faced with the challenge of delivering high quality services while reducing our costs by 30 per cent. The ICT market is changing rapidly, becoming much more commoditised and consumer-led, where significant economies of scale are now possible," he said.

The council will move away from owning much of its ICT in the future, Pendleton added, as it will instead aim to buy services that match demand in a much more flexible way.

"IT transformation plays a critical role in allowing us to achieve that. Moving our IT estate to the cloud will give us a more flexible and cost-effective resource which can adapt to our changing needs," he said.