BT snags five-year IT hosting deal with police force quartet

Telco beats three rival bidders to potential £50m shared services deal with south east police forces

BT has snaffled a major five-year deal to provide a range of hosted IT services to various police forces across the south east of England.

The deal covers a variety of hosted technologies and related services including co-location, infrastructure-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, SAN, load balancing, migration, and assorted consultancy and professional services. The tender notice for the five-year contract pegged its worth at up to £40m, excluding VAT.

Surrey Police acts as frontman for the deal, which can also be used by forces in Sussex, the Thames Valley, and Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The contract award notice claims the forces want to "improve the resilience of their hosting services; improve the agility of the hosting services; leverage economies of scale through shared provision; [and] reduce total cost of ownership".

The tender specified that the forces were looking to work with a single supplier. Four bids were made, with BT emerging as the winner.