We’re getting news that Northgate has been appointed preferred bidder for the Education Network Northern Ireland (ENNI) contract. The value is not yet confirmed, but the base contract will be in the tens of millions per year, so this is a substantial win for the company.
Northgate was already very much present in the NI education sector, having provided in-school IT services for the past 10 years. Talking to Andy Ross, CEO of Northgate Managed Services, this morning, it’s clear the new deal is considerably more expansive and "transformational". It involves building an “Education Cloud” for 1,200 schools and 350k users in the province, all with an “any device, any browser” type of approach. Eircom will provide the network capability, while Northgate’s other partners on the deal include Capita, Pearson, Dell, Cisco and EMC.
As highlighted in our recent predictions for the year (see TechMarketView predictions for 2012 – UK Public Sector), education is one of those areas of the public sector where traditionally central government-focused IT services majors will be directing more and more attention. So it’s worth noting that Northgate fought off challenges from Fujitsu/BT/RM and HP/C&W to win on ENNI. Given our thoughts on the future of Northgate (see Northgate appoints new CEO), this may of course this may turn into one of those cases of “if you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em”.