UK Home Office opens AWS cash firehose even wider with £100m public cloud services deal

The UK's Home Office has tossed a contract worth up to £100m of taxpayer cash at Amazon Web Services to renew a public cloud hosting agreement with the hyper tax efficient American giant for four years. The contract was published on Contracts Finder this week but the start date was actually on 12 December and it runs until 11 …

[alain williams]

Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

More secure - less easy for the USA get see what we have (qv Patriot Act)

Generate jobs in the UK

Develop UK skills

Pay UK taxes

[SWCD]

Re: Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

Added benefit... The US can't switch the lot off.

I mean honestly, a country putting their critical data in the hands of a company from another country...?

Have we lost the plot or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

AWS does have UK regions/DCs available (as does Azure), normally the criteria for sensitive data or certain government functions is that their data has to be retained on servers hosted in a domestic DC.

As for companies from another country being involved, this isn't anything new. You've had the likes of DXC (formerly HPE/EDS), Accenture, ATOS and other large IT multinationals providing hosting, outsourcing and other BPO-style services to government departments for decades.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

Do you know if this is actual UK? Or the "region" UK, which also includes Dublin according to some cloud companies.

[SWCD]

Re: Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

"...sensitive data or certain government functions is that their data has to be retained on servers hosted in a domestic DC."

Of course, but the whole lot could still be switched off from the US? It may not be a new situation, but increasing reliance on companies outside of our control surely can't be wise? I suppose there's the special relationship though so it won't ever be an issue :-\

[macjules]

Re: Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

Well the simple answer is that UKHO retain the £100m spend and pass it on to HMRC saying to AWS that "we paid some of your outstanding taxes for you".

[Anonymous Coward]

The contract was published on Contracts Finder this week but the start date was actually on 12 December and it runs until 11 December 20203.

That's a long contract

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Yeah, £100m for a 18,183 year contract is decent value for money, plus, after 18,000 years we may have finished Brexit and found a way to get Amazon to pay some tax

[IT Hack]

Maxwell

The man who once compared government IT to twitter and therefore easy to do.

I kid thee not.

Beer coz its Firday.

[Paratrooping Parrot]

Amazon tax

Is that why Amazon don't need to pay tax?

[Anonymous Coward]

Government is at fault for companies using legal loopholes to avoid paying their (and I'm not even going to say "fair share of") tax.

That is it and that is all it is. We could argue till the cows come home about "ethical" or "whats right" but we live in a money centric society and it will never change until there is political will to change it. As to whether we should award them contracts does anyone really think the 100m going to another cloud provider would have wielded anymore tax? I doubt it very much.

[ecofeco]

Insanity. Utter twatwaffle insanity

That ANY government would out-source ANY of its digital functions, ESPECIALLY to another country, is disaster waiting to happen.

[hoola]

Re: Insanity. Utter twatwaffle insanity

Tossers. both the Government and Amazon.

I expect there were a few trips to Seattle for the head honchos, all above board.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Insanity. Utter twatwaffle insanity

Using AWS (or any other cloud provider for that matter) is NOT outsourcing. They provide hardware and software in a data centre that the customer (or their chosen OUTSOURCER). Are you proposing that the government manufacture its own hardware and write its own operating systems and databases, etc?

[whoseyourdaddy]

With your govt outsourcing things left and right, it's not easy to beat AWS uptime.

Maybe they will invest in bigger fiber to connect it all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another avenue for IT jobs to disappear down, thanks a lot. Personally, based on experience I would not trust AWS with UK citizens data and critical services.

I hope risk IT management practices are being improved in government.

Remember AWS are cheap for a reason and its not because they love the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

We spend 100s of billions on HS2 ? Why can't we build our own cloud ?

UK strategy sucks.........

[Anonymous Coward]

HMG should be ashamed of itself for awarding contracts to companies that are wrecking our high streets, have less than stellar records when it comes to human rights and employment practices, and practice aggressive tax avoidance. That’s before we even get to the very pertinent question about the wisdom of handing over vast quantities of the UK’s most sensitive data to a foreign entity

[NeilPost]

Do you mean Amazon or Tesco???

Curious what human rights you think Amazon have breached ??

Data will have to comply yah EU GDPR.

You should maybe worry more about the NHS info sharing with Amazon Health Infomatucs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but local government has wrecked / is wrecking the high street though anti-car policies and extortionate business rates.

[JP-NOT]

History

This contract was with Vodafone hosting, based out of Swindon and Uxbridge datacenters.