UKCloud has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Crown Commercial Service (CCS).

The MoU sets out preferential commercial terms for UKCloud to offer its services to the public sector, either directly or indirectly through its partner community. 

The announcement comes just a month after Google Cloud signed a similar agreement with CCS, boosting its investments in cloud technologies aimed at public sector bodies. 

UKCloud is a Farnborough-based business that provides multi-cloud services to the public sector. Its seen rapid growth since its inception in 2011, and attractive investment from companies such as Cisco in 2019.

The UK’s cloud market has also seen rapid growth, with public sector spending on cloud services increasing by over £6bn in the last eight years, according to UKCloud.

“Cloud has moved on from being limited to GDS Digital Exemplars to underpinning some of governments most complex, high profile and business-critical programmes,” said Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud.

“It’s now recognised that there is no one size fits all cloud — which is why UKCloud has matured into the UK’s foremost expert multi-cloud provider, as well as being one of the most socially responsible cloud providers within the market.

“We continue to stand out from the competition and I’m pleased to say that is reflected in our MOU with the CCS.”

The preferential commercial terms in the MoU includes double-digit discounts for a wide range of UKCloud services, such as a second-tier platform for sensitive government workloads, ‘desktop as a service’ and ‘disaster recovery as a service’ offerings, and object storage.

“We hope that by providing this commercial advantage, underpinned by robust principles that matter to our public sector customer base, cloud adoption will become easier and less risky,” Hansford added. “In turn, this will help to accelerate the UK public sector’s digital transformation, so that better outcomes are delivered to the citizen”.