In January we heard that Northgate Managed Services had been appointed, by C2k, as preferred bidder for the Education Network Northern Ireland (ENNI) contract (see Northgate wins Northern Ireland managed services contract). At the time details were scant, though we indicated that the contract was set to be valued in the tens of millions of pounds. Today Northgate has confirmed the win and has valued the five year contract, which covers WAN, LAN and telecoms (via subcontractor Eircom) at £170 million.
This is a big win for Northgate. The annual value represents a big chunk of the divisions’ c£120m annual turnover. Northgate Managed Services is headquartered in Northern Ireland and, we understand around half of its 1,300-strong workforce is based in the region. The company had been working with C2k since 1998, and most recently – in 2009 - had its contract for provision of the local area networks (LANs) extended for two years under a £24 million contract.
In the same year, HP also had its contract covering WAN managed services extended. With both contracts coming to an end, Northgate fought off competition for this broader deal from HP (alongside Cable & Wireless) and Fujitsu (alongside BT and RM) with its bid alongside partners Capita, Pearson, Dell, Cisco, EMC and Eircom. Capita Education Services has long been the provider of software for management information systems (MIS) under C2k.
All three prime bidders have a strong history in Northern Ireland so would have fought hard for this deal; Fujitsu counts NI Department of Justice, NI Courts Service, DVLA NI, NI Civil Service and NI Water as its customers, while HP states it is the largest IT and services provider in Ireland employing over 4,000 people between Belfast, Galway and Leixlip.
Also highlighted by the announcement is the broad scope of the deal, in which Northgate is taking control of all aspects of IT, inclcuding Schools IT, data centre, applications, MIS and service desk, in what is touted as “Europe’s first Education Cloud environment for schools in Northern Ireland”. The system will allow secure access from a wide range of devices.
In our report ‘Ed Cloud’ before G-Cloud, we highlighted the incentives for UK schools to move ‘cloudwards’. While it is still early days, suppliers that can develop a cloud-based one-stop shop to meet UK schools’ infrastructure and education needs are well placed to benefit. Northgate launched an IaaS offering aimed at schools at the BETT education show in January. The ENNI contract has the potential to be a fantastic reference site as Northgate looks to further to establish itself as a provider of complex leading-edge cloud infrastructure in education.