Atomic Weapons Establishment ditches 2e2 in funding row

Stricken integrator 2e2's administrator has confirmed in a letter to staff that the Atomic Weapons Establishment, one of its data centre customers, walked after it was asked to pay thousands of pounds to keep the server farm up and running. FTI Consulting, hauled in to take charge of 2e2 late January, told remaining staff at …

[Matt Bryant]

Non-story.

AWE has to vet all parties that work with them, so there was no way they would just allow their business to be sold on to someone they didn't already have vetted. If it's anything like the old contracts such non-existant HMG organisations use, AWE would have had terms that allowed them to pull out if 2e2 changed in any way (like a Chinese company buying up a chunk of 2e2 and getting on the board). The moment 2e2 went into receivership I'm certain the AWE bods started going back to the other companies that had already passed vetting and had made competing proposals to the 2e2 winning bid, and offered them a second chance to bid for the business.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Non-story.

I'm agreeing with Mr Bryant, don't remember that happening before but these are interesting times :-)

AWE should however have had something in their contracts that required advance notice of any material change (like administration), and also a provision that says "in the event of administration, we get all our stuff back, immediately, at no cost to us, and any administrator that tries to extort money from HMG finds itself struck-off and in adminstration, with all of the partners / employees / subbies told they are never allowed to work on any UK public sector contract ever again or receive any benefits payments" .

Oh, and another clause that says "anyone who tries to feed horse-based lasagne to our staff gets to go live in a neighbouring country, outside UK.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Non-story.

If I were AWE, I would want to invoke the 'distroy all data you hold for us' clause of the contract that they must have. Otherwise, who knows where it will turn up!

[Arachnoid]

Maybe 2e2 should change its name to 2b Ornot 2b as their future is defiantly in the later half of the name.

[The Godfather]

This administration has been the worst I've ever come across.....woeful....ineffective...damaging. They have one master, and its not the business, the employees, its customers or the creditors. They could have achieved much more.

[fronty]

Standard clause

Every contract I have ever signed or issued has had a clause enabling termination in the event of insolvency or administration, AWE have simply exercised this clause, it's pretty standard.

[copyrighton]

Trident in the Cloud

unbelievable

[copyrighton]

Re: Trident in the Cloud

Having a CND moment

[Ian Bradshaw]

Disaster Recovery

I assume AWE are the only ones that are confident in their disaster recovery & contingency plans. I'd guess all the ones in enough of a panic to stump up £40,000 at a days notice were less confident they could continue operations.

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: Disaster Recovery

That was my thought - there is at least one of 2e2's customers that thought about the possibility of it all going titsup. Perhaps not unexpected, given the nature of their work ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Disaster Recovery

You'll find that most "sensitive" contracts are just outsourcing the labour and kit suppliers, the DATA is still held in Gov secure establishments and not in third party datacentres.

[TeeCee]

2e2 The Movie.

Or "How I learned to start worrying and hate the bomb.".

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect?

If 2e2 had acted responsibly and negotiated with perhaps O2, (who have been in partnership with 2e2 for the last 18 months) or someone else, then perhaps jobs and face could of been saved.

But as 2e2 have acted the way they always do, i.e. tell everyone what a good job they are doing whilst Arse *ucking the profit margins/staff a lot of jobs could of been secured before making good hardworking loyal people suffer.

But as normal 2e2 hide behind the law and the administrators while they are off on their toes. I bet not many top Directors had any 2e2 shares well before Christmas!

No doubt there will be a perfectly reasonable answer for everything, all except looking after the people in a sinking ship.

...Shall we have another team meeting now? - high 5!

[tin 2]

and so is shown the problem with "managed services"

"Unfortunately AWE cancelled their contract yesterday. The administrators do not know what replacement arrangements AWE have reached but employees may wish to seek further guidance as to the possibility of their employment transferring to AWE or AWE's new supplier under TUPE,"

WHUT? So effectively 2e2 was just employing the people that worked on AWEs systems, to just work on AWEs systems? When AWE says bye bye, they tell the AWE people there's no AWE to work on anymore and they may be suitable to move across to the next provider? Where's the economy of scale/pooling of skills/etc here? Ah there is none. Just someone else standing in the middle of customer and employees creaming off money for themselves.