Crown Hosting Service moves to CCS to gain specialist procurement talent

The number of public sector bodies using the Crown Hosting Framework for data centres is set to increase, as the Crown Commercial Service takes over responsibility for the service.

Crown Hosting Service to move to CCS – Photo credit: PA

The CCS announced this week that it had taken over responsibility of the data centre service for the public sector from the Government Digital Service, a change that came into effect at the start of the month.

The Crown Hosting Service provides data centre colocation services for central government bodies, with a single supplier framework agreement in place with Crown Hosting Data Centres Limited.

The government has said it expects to expand its customer base, and that the move to CCS would “allow wider commercial conversations with central government customers and better promotion across the wider public sector”.


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The aim of the move is to use CCS’ procurement experience, including dedicated customer and specialist procurement teams, to boost customer numbers and improve the service.

Stephen Hall, chief executive of Crown Hosting said: “Crown Hosting has seen fantastic success within its first two years which have far exceeded everyone’s expectations.

“The move to CCS was a decision taken with the Cabinet Office and is designed to drive the benefits even further forward by closer integration with central government department transformation plans’, alongside increasing savings in the local government, police and health sectors.”

The current team working on Crown Hosting will move to the CCS, and the CCS cloud and digital technology team will oversee the service’s strategy and commercial delivery.

The Crown Hosting Service, which was formed in 2015 as a joint venture between the Cabinet Office and Ark Data Centres, is to provide a transition point to the cloud to support the government’s cloud first policy.

It offers public sector bodies a framework to procure efficient data centre colocation services on flexible contracts, with the aim being to save them money and make the move to the cloud easier.

Public sector bodies that have used the service to switch from legacy data centres include the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics.

Rebecca.Hill

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