Massive tech-for-British-schoolkids cash pot up for grabs as UK education buyers prep £140m agreement

Pheonix Software, Deloitte and Computeam are among the 17 winners sticking their snouts into a £100m pork barrel framework for outsourcing in the UK’s education sector.

The outsourcing deal was organised by the Crescent Purchasing Consortium and other public sector buyers including Education Authority Northern Ireland and North Western Universities Purchasing Consortium.

It is split into two lots, the first of which covers outsourcing of IT services including remote and on-site service provision for proactive and reactive support. This includes monitoring, incident managing, testing, fault fixing, backup and disaster recovery and so on. Also included are asset management and IT procurement, service integration and management, project management and IT strategy.

The second lot involves the provision of consultancy and design services “where a solution is yet to be defined.”

The tender document added: “The purpose of this lot is to attract independent consultants who can utilise expertise from a technical standpoint, offering objective recommendations to support a tendering process for an outsourced ICT service by working in conjunction with an institutions’ procurement staff."

With £100m on the table, it seems the buyers have the attention of the market. See below for a full list of winners.

Alongside the outsourcing arrangement, a group of public sector buyers have separately been awarded a £40m framework contract for networking equipment, storage hardware and cloud-based storage, again set up by the Crescent Purchasing Consortium, owned by buyers in the UK’s further education sector.

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This framework will be split into three areas: on-premises, cloud and hybrid cloud, and consultancy services. The framework will also be open education institutions in Northern Ireland and the wider public sector. The on-prem hardware includes everything from switches, structured cabling, network security, network-attached storage devices and storage area network solutions right down to power systems and air conditioning systems, according to the award notice.

See below for the full list of suppliers vying for a slice of £40m.

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