A planning notice published on October 30 covers the renewal of the department's public cloud services for its current and future hosting needs. AWS won the existing contract with the Home Office in 2023 for about £450 million. If awarded, the new contract is expected to run from December 2027 to December 2029, with a possible extension to December 2031.
The notice arrives as digital sovereignty becomes a growing issue in the UK and across Europe, amid suspicion that US authorities have cut off access to American technology for political reasons. A survey found that about three-quarters of businesses in the UK, France, and Germany fear Washington could abruptly sever access to the US tech platforms they rely on. Earlier this year, the Open Rights Group warned politicians that the UK is far too dependent on US technology companies to run critical operations.
The Register reported in 2024 that the Cabinet Office had acknowledged, in an internal document it saw, that the government's negotiating power had been inhibited by vendor lock-in. The document said the "UK government's current approach to cloud adoption and management across its departments faces several challenges" that combine to result "in risk concentration and vendor lock-in that inhibit UK government's negotiating power over the cloud vendors." It acknowledged "the existing dominance of AWS and Azure in the UK Government's cloud services is set to continue."
The Home Office would not say who else is being considered, saying it does not comment on ongoing procurement. A market engagement event for suppliers on the G-Cloud 15 Lot 1A procurement framework is scheduled for December 8.
A source at one supplier that works with the public sector told The Register that the UK administration was "failing to support UK [cloud] providers, it says they can't meet scale and that is garbage." They claimed that in many cases the government people writing the tenders are advised by professional services companies to favor the hyperscalers. The professional services companies are then "rewarded" as migration or integration partners, the source claimed.
The UK government last month published an action plan pledging to steer more business to small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). In August it added smaller, local suppliers to G-Cloud 15, though a place on the framework does not guarantee any business. According to public sector intelligence platform BidSkim, AWS takes 75 percent of the government money on cloud contracts, worth about £1.22 billion. It estimates that Microsoft Azure has more contracts, but these are smaller and add up to £355 million, while Google Cloud is on £47 million and Oracle Cloud on $15 million.