YPO debuts £400m datacentre and cloud framework for local councils and schools

Procurement body YPO has set live a four-year, £400m datacentre and cloud hosting framework to aid data-sharing at large-scale across the public sector.

The 12 Lot Datacentres, Cloud Hosting and Data Security Solutions framework is populated by 29 suppliers in total, including the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS), UKCloud, T-Systems, Six Degrees, and Park Place Technologies.

The framework Lots cover off elements of datacentre facility maintenance and management, along with the provision of cloud and hosting services, business continuity and disaster recovery offerings, as well as colocation, shared hosting services, data security and network connectivity too.

It is set to run until 31 July 2023, and is intended to support the use of hybrid cloud deployments by public sector organisations, particularly those operating in the local government and education sectors, according to YPO.

“Organisations in local government and education sectors will often naturally span large estates so it is integral that their data can be stored effectively and can be accessed in a timely manner,” said Sarah Sesum, category manager for ICT at YPO.

“Working closely with our supplies, we intend to provide tailored data solutions for many years to come.”

The framework is one of more than 100 YPO, which is owned by 13 local authorities in the north of England, enables schools, councils, charities, blue light organisations and other public sector bodies purchase products and services through.

News of the YPO framework follows on from the launch of similar one by the Scottish Government, and comes several months after the NHS Shared Business Services debuted an offering of its own. It is also hot on the heels of the latest iteration of the UK government’s G-Cloud framework going live.

The emergence of these frameworks is largely seen as good news for public sector buyers, as it gives their organisations a wide variety of procurement options to tap into, with some selling themselves as particularly targeted to the needs of specific users.

As previously reported by Computer Weekly, however, the supplier community has outlined some misgivings about the growing number of cloud frameworks being made available to public sector buyers, particularly as they could potentially divert business away from G-Cloud.