Credit: Pxfuel

HM Revenue and Customs has signed a multimillion-pound one-year deal with Microsoft to migrate on-premises systems to the vendor’s cloud environment.

The contract relates to the tax agency’s Joint Transformation Office (JTO) programme, through which it intends to accelerate its adoption of cloud. The JTO scheme forms part of the department’s EPS (Enterprise Platform Services) Change initiative, which has “the objective of delivering standards, consistency and ownership across HMRC’s IT estate”.

The Microsoft deal is worth £5.02m; it came into effect on 27 September and lasts until 16 September 2022.

“JTO programme of work [is] to include cloud migration services to enable HMRC to move from on-premise legacy environments into Microsoft cloud technologies, cybersecurity and digital advisory services,” the contract award notice said. 

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Precise details of services to be delivered are, in large part, redacted from the contract. But the document does list a range of offerings Microsoft will be expected to provide over the next 12 months, including: project management and governance; adoption and change management; migration assistance; service management; security assistance; digital advisory services; and arch oversight.

Earlier this year, HMRC signed a £94m deal with another major cloud provider: Amazon Web Services. The three-year deal covers hosting and a range of related services. It was signed under the terms of the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA), a pan-public sector arrangement through which buyers receive a discount of at least 18% on AWS services. 

The £94m deal replaced a £41m two-year contract with AWS that was signed only six months previously – shortly before the OGVA was announced.