NHS Business Services Authority (BSA) has kicked off a programme of IT disaggregation by awarding a £30m infrastructure and services contract to London-based firm Agilisys.

NHS BSA – an arm’s-length body that provides business support to the wider health service – has an existing supplier contract for all its IT services needs that expires at the end of 2019. Between now and then, the organisation will be breaking up and retendering the component parts of that deal.

The first of these disaggregated contracts, which covers tech infrastructure and related services, has been won by Agilisys.

According to the contract award notice, the company will be tasked with “the design, implementation and maintenance of the centralised and distributed platforms and infrastructure services needed to support the authority's in-scope business applications”. The deal will see Agilisys take responsibility for hosting services currently housed on datacentres run by NHS BSA’s incumbent tech supplier – as well as those located on the authority’s own infrastructure.

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“The centralised platforms and infrastructure services for these will be designed and built within the datacentres by the managed infrastructure supplier, followed by a cutover of data and applications from the incumbent datacentres,” the notice added. “Infrastructure services hosted on the authority's sites will be transitioned to the new supplier via a 'walk in, takeover' approach. This service will also include cloud brokerage where applications are able to be cloud hosted and so reduce the footprint of the residual ‘on-premise’ datacentre estate.”

The deal, which is worth an estimated £29.9m and came into effect on 22 August, will run for four years plus two optional one-year extensions. 

NHS BSA’s ultimate goal is to reduce its reliance on one provider and adopt a tailored version of the blueprint contracting and operating methods espoused by the Crown Commercial Service.

“The target operating model (TOM) involves a move away from dependency on a single prime supplier to a multi-supplier environment with suppliers being onboarded, offboarded, and managed by the authority under service-integration and management-function arrangements,” the notice added. “Collaboration and cooperation across the supplier base is critical to the success of the TOM, in that end-to-end service delivery can only be achieved where the key suppliers are working together collaboratively.”

Based in Hammersmith in west London, Agilisys was founded 20 years ago and specialises in cloud computing and digital platforms. Annual accounts for the 2017 financial year for Agilisys Holdings Limited show that the firm banked £9m in net profits on annual sales of £144.3m.