Ofcom signs up NIIT in £23m IT services deal

Indian outsourcing firm NIIT will take over from CGI

Ofcom, the communications regulator, has chosen Indian outsourcing company NIIT Technologies to provide it with IT services as part of a £23m contract.

Last July, Ofcom released a pre-tender notice, stating that it was looking for a supplier to provide IT services such as service management and integration, user support, IT security, end-user computing, hosting and storage, communication and collaboration, application support, and maintenance and project management.

It said that the services would support a programme called "Project Apex".

NIIT will take over from CGI, who has been a provider of IT services to Ofcom for a number of years.

In its pre-tender notice, Ofcom estimated that the cost of the entire overhaul ranges between £15m and £25m excluding VAT. It said that it intended to run a procurement exercise for IT services, with lots to be awarded to one or multiple providers.

It has given one of the two lots to NIIT, with a second lot for network services yet to be decided, while the value of the contract excluding VAT is now £23,306,357.

Ofcom currently has a number of technologies deployed using Citrix-based thin client, fat client and tablets. Its servers and storage are currently hosted in third-party data centres and the majority of applications are hosted in-house, although some are to be hosted over the cloud.

Ofcom said in its pre-tender notice that it wanted the new provider to continue enabling these services, as well as others previously provided by CGI. These include email, instant messaging, document management, audio and videoconferencing, fixed and mobile telephony, WAN, LAN, internet connectivity, a full range of ITILv3 service management processes as well as a service desk, and self-service portal.