The nascent UK Public Services Network (PSN) – a ‘single logical network and marketplace for public sector communications’ – passed a major milestone last week with the award of the PSN Services Framework. This is the second, and final, procurement framework for PSN to be put in place by the Government Procurement Service (GPS) following the award of the PSN Connectivity Framework in April (see 12 PSN Connectivity suppliers chosen). Twenty-nine suppliers succeeded in getting a place on the latest framework, which covers a range of services from CCTV and physical security monitoring, to video and teleconferencing systems, contact centre services, mobile services, hosting and web services.
The list includes the usual ‘networking’ suspects – BT, CWW, Level 3 (Global Crossing), Virgin Media Business, KCom, Logicalis – as well as mobile players such as Vodafone and Everything Everywhere. Successful suppliers with more of a traditional SITS background include 2e2, Capita, CSC, Computacenter, Fujitsu, Phoenix IT, SCC and Thales. The remaining suppliers tend to be less well-known in the UK SITS space. They range from smaller comms companies like Azzurri Communications and Daisy Communications to the likes of Cassidian (the defence and security division of US giant EADS) and Telefonica.
All 29 suppliers will naturally be hoping to benefit by their inclusion on the Services framework, but none more so than market leaders BT and, to a lesser extent, CWW. As incumbents at many of the largest public sector organisations they have the most to lose by the increased competition and commoditization of the public sector communications market. But as prices come down in the Connectivity space, they’ll be hoping to compensate for the inevitable decline in revenue by layering more services over the top of the network. So too will their rivals of course, and we think the likes of Level 3 and Virgin Media Business are particularly well-placed to take share in their respective areas of the market with some 'compelling' offerings and aggressive pricing.
For more analysis of the PSN market and supplier landscape eligible TechMarketView subscribers can download our recent PublicSectorViews report, ‘PSN: foundation for change in public sector IT?’. If you don’t yet subscribe to PublicSectorViews, Deborah Seth would be very happy to provide details of the subscription packages we offer.
