Central UK govt awards £12M+ contract to go away Google Workspace for Microsoft 365

The UK’s Cupboard Workplace is emigrate away from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 — in keeping with the remainder of central authorities — in a transfer set to price as much as £15 million in third-party undertaking assist alone.

French IT service big Capgemini has been awarded a deal price between £12 million and £15 million ($14.8-$18.6 million) to assist the division, which co-ordinates technique and coverage implementation throughout central authorities, change from the Google surroundings to Microsoft Workplace instruments, in keeping with a contract discover printed earlier this month.

The undertaking is predicted to switch round 15,000 customers — together with ministers and senior civil servants — onto the brand new private productiveness software program.

The Cupboard Workplace consists of Authorities Digital Providers, which started its ‘journey’ with Google Workspace in 2010-2011. A separate Cupboard Workplace IT platform, which included the Google instruments, was rolled out in 2014-2015.

Within the contract paperwork, the federal government stated the goal of the transfer from Google Workspaces to Microsoft 365 was “to align with the remainder of central authorities and allow higher collaboration alternatives.” The rollout is predicted to start out in September 2023, because the schedule set out within the paperwork signifies.

The purpose of the undertaking — which burdens in-house tech groups in addition to Capgemini — is to create efficiencies by “decreasing the dimensions/complexity of that IT infrastructure footprint, all by leveraging native cloud providers.”

It can additionally meet the Nationwide Cyber Safety Centre’s (NCSC) and Authorities Safety Group’s (GSG) tips and be “simpler and cheaper to run, permitting the IT infrastructure groups to give attention to high-value high-complexity duties, as an alternative of commodity providers akin to patching,” the Cupboard Workplace stated. The brand new platform could be extra “user-centric, simple to make use of, and supportive of enterprise person necessities,” it stated.

The undertaking will contain migrating all the Cupboard Workplace’s present knowledge and data onto Microsoft’s platform “whereas reworking the division to align with each Microsoft’s advisable safety greatest practices and advisable data and information structure.”

Fairly why the Cupboard Workplace determined to go its personal manner with Google Workspace, the paperwork don’t disclose, however the division renewed its religion within the productiveness instruments as not too long ago as 2021.