Government teams with SME to offer 'pay for what you use' data centre service
'In the past Whitehall wasn't sure of how many of these centres there were,' says Francis Maude
The government has teamed up with SME Ark Data Centres for a new joint-venture dubbed Crown Hosting Data Centres, which will provide public bodies with a physical space to host their servers and systems that aren't in the cloud.
Ark Data Centres will own a 75 per cent share of the new company, while the government will retain a 25 per cent stake in the business.
Crown Hosting Data Centres will be available to the whole of government and the wider public sector, and The Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office and the Highways Agency are its first three customers. The Cabinet Office said that each customer will be able to use the physical space on a "pay for what you use" basis.
It added that in the past, individual departments paid different amounts to either build their own data centres or outsource the service, but would find themselves locked in to longer-term, inflexible contracts.
"It doesn't make sense for departments to host their servers in different ways and at different costs," said Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude.
"In the past Whitehall wasn't even sure of how many of these centres there were," he added.
The government claimed that this new approach to buying data hosting services would save taxpayers up to £105m over a seven-year period, as well as allowing the government to use more up-to-date data centres that are more energy efficient.
Steve Hall, CEO at Crown Hosting Data Centres, claimed that the service would "further drive the unbundling of large legacy contracts".
The government said this was the first explicit legacy procurement in government, and would help IT leaders to keep legacy systems running but also provide the impetus to design and develop new services based on user needs.