UK government gifts new £250m hosting contract to its own joint venture

The UK government's Cabinet Office is seeking to negotiate a new agreement for hosting services for public-sector customers, but appears set to award the contract to its own joint venture with Ark Data Centres. The rationale is that Ark is the only supplier judged to be capable of meeting the necessary security requirements. …

[katrinab]

Do I understand correctly

They want to move from data centres to "cloud"

But "cloud" doesn't meet their security requirements

So they build their own data centre, call it a cloud, and move it to that.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Do I understand correctly

If only.

It seems as if they only own a quarter of it anyway. If they were serious about meeting their security requirements they'd own all of it.

[Citizen of Nowhere]

Re: Do I understand correctly

What the article says is that as a result of the overall policy of "cloud first" a larger proportion of the workloads which will remain in the data centre will be "sensitive". That "sensitivity" they say, justifies the award to this supplier as uniquely qualified from a security perspective. Add your own dose of salt to taste ;-)

[amanfromMars 1]

Crown Jewels or Dirty Deeds ?

Can you imagine the sort of info and intel a RAT would discover with a sweet crack and sublime hack into any of those data centres ‽ .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Crown Jewels or Dirty Deeds ?

I've just been rewatching Mr Robot so yesssssss I can :D

[Pascal Monett]

Brilliant !

Government creates for-profit enterprise to supply government, then decides that it can bestow contract on it without public tender.

No way anything can possibly go wrong with that.

Next you'll be telling me that there are absolutely zero MPs or parliament officials involved on either side of this deal.

Is Dido Harding lurking anywhere near ?

[amanfromMars 1]

Even Brillianter .... although it might not be strictly kosher !

Government creates for-profit enterprise to supply government, then decides that it can bestow contract on it without public tender in order to extract tens/tons of millions at their leisure for their pleasures.

Is that too cynical to be true and unlikely? Or a good plan if being followed by a blind man on a galloping wild horse? Parliament has proven form for not abiding by rules and the norm.

Whenever the core is rotten and effective leadership is missing, all manner of strange and incriminating shenanigans all of a sudden start to appear from the shadows to be questioned in the white heat light of the day and another suspect 0day.

[alain williams]

This makes sense in so many ways

A Wiltshire based company so easier to do a security audit & keep on so.

Based in the UK, so out of reach of things like the USA patriot act, increase UK based skills.

A joint venture: good for audit and stop bleeding profits overseas.

[Korev]

UK government gifts new £250m hosting contract to its own joint venture

What's wrong with the word "gives"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chickenfeed!!!

Quote: "...UK government gifts new £250m hosting contract..."

Chickenfeed.......just take a look at this (under-reported) news item:

- Link: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/royal-navy-ministry-of-defence-russia-pip-tobias-ellwood-b2009369.html

SIX (count them) destroyers all OUT OF ACTION. Billions of pounds spent with BA Systems..................

......and complete inability to deploy our two aircraft carriers safely (another £10 billion with BA Systems) because we can't deploy a carrier group (see news about destroyers above).

Did I mention "chickenfeed"? Billions of wasted money with BA Systems.......and this news item wants me to worry about £250 million...........

Am I missing something here?

[darklord]

A Wiltshire based Data centre owned by Lord XXXXX business ventures and partners hmmm bit of inhouse dodgyness going on here.