BT bags Surrey County Council shared services deal

published 7 September 2012

Surrey County Council has enlisted comms provider BT to help it establish a public services network that can be used by all of its departments.

The deal, which is estimated to be worth around 120 million, will see BT replace 40 of the council's networks with a single, shared system.

Public sector bodies within Surrey and Berkshire will also be invited to use the network, which will link up all of their IT and communications systems.

Surrey County Council estimates the move will help it achieve more than 5 million in efficiency savings over the course of the seven-year deal with BT.

Denise Le Gal, cabinet member for Change and Efficiency, said: "Our aim is to provide the highest quality services...and developing a cloud platform as part of the single public services network is the latest example of our willingness to embrace new ideas.

"We firmly believe public services should be seen as a single team, co-operating to make taxpayers' money go further wherever possible."

Neil Rogers, president of global government at BT Global Services, added: "BT is committed to making this work for the wider community in Surrey and Berkshire and to be an exemplar of PSN services in the public sector."

Caroline Donnelly is the news and analysis editor of IT Pro and its sister site Cloud Pro, and covers general news, as well as the storage, security, public sector, cloud and Microsoft beats. Caroline has been a member of the IT Pro/Cloud Pro team since March 2012, and has previously worked as a reporter at several B2B publications, including UK channel magazine CRN, and as features writer for local weekly newspaper, The Slough and Windsor Observer. She studied Medical Biochemistry at the University of Leicester and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism at PMA Training in 2006.