Foreign Office gives £82m IT contract to C&W Worldwide
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has signed an £82m, five and a half year contract with Cable&Wireless Worldwide to provide communications for the government department.
C&WW will provide a suite of internet telephony and data services, including managed video conferencing, unified communications, security, mobility and cloud-based application services, to the FCO, the company said on Tuesday.
"We're delighted that this groundbreaking framework is now in place and that we have our first contract in the FCO," said Cable&Wireless Worldwide chief executive Jim Marsh in a statement.
The FCO has a global network linking over 200 embassies, high commissions and consulates in more than 160 countries.
Cable&Wireless told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that its Next-Generation Network (NGN) would allow secure communications, and access to applications on the government cloud.
The G-Cloud — or government cloud — is a government initiative to try to make the provisioning and procurement of IT software and services across government simpler.
"The C&W Worldwide solution is based on the establishment of a robust communications platform that will underpin the delivery of cloud services across the framework including; secure bulk data transfer, managed exchange, mail relay and malware protection, secure collaboration and unified communications services together with managed video conferencing," said the company. "As G-Cloud services come on stream, C&W Worldwide will be able to deliver them across the network with guaranteed per application network performance."
The company added that it will provide cloud and data services from resilient data centres, and make use of its sub-sea cable network for business continuity in the event of a disaster or attack.
The contract was signed off by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, C&WW said.