Stone and XMA among winners of multimillion-pound mega framework

Resellers pop up on £200m-a-year education framework alongside a handful of vendors

Stone and XMA have won a place on a multimillion-pound universities framework alongside six vendors.

The Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium's (SUPC) Servers, Storage and Solutions National Agreement (SSSNA) will last for four years and will be worth between £200m and £600m over that period.

The agreement is split into four lots, the first two of which have been awarded. Lot 1 - Servers only - has a start date of 1 November 2016 and was awarded to Dell, Fujitsu, HPE, Huawei, Lenovo, Stone and XMA. Lot 2 - Storage only - goes to Dell, Fujitsu, HPE, Huawei, Lenovo and NetApp.

The remaining Lot 3 and Lot 4, which cover high-performing computing, are likely to be awarded later on in November, the SUPC said in a statement, adding no further details.

In initial contract documents, the SUPC said it is acting on behalf of its own members, and those of the following groups: Higher Education Purchasing Consortium for Wales; the London Universities Purchasing Consortium; the North West Universities Purchasing Consortium; the North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium; and APUC Limited (Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges).

The framework is for the provision of servers, storage and solutions, including virtual appliances; support and maintenance and warranty extensions' software-defined storage; and backup solutions. It also includes compute and server-related solutions; converged, hyper-converged, HPC; and associated infrastructure.

Fujitsu's education director Ash Merchant said: "We are incredibly pleased with our successful tenders for Lots 1 and 2 of the SSSNA framework. While we have retained our server supply position, being successful in the storage lot for the first time, and placing second at that, is testament to our industry best-in-class product offering and the technical expertise that comes with it."

Stone's marketing director Daley Robinson described winning a spot on the framework as "fantastic news".