The British government spent over £2.8 billion on cloud services in the 2021-2022 financial year, via its G-Cloud procurement framework alone. There was one clear winner, which outstripped the others by a huge margin.
AWS won £147.8 million of work under this procurement framework alone last year.
That's streets ahead of second placed G-Cloud supplier Deloitte, which landed £83.9 million of work.
In third place was PA Consulting, the London-based privately held consulting group, which won £67 million under G-Cloud. In fourth place was BAE Systems with £51 million and in fifth place was Capgemini with £50 million. (Large SIs clearly and perhaps unsurprisingly continue to win substantial public sector contracts.)
See also: Home Office eying privatisation of bulk surveillance apparatus
The UK government cloud spend figures are reported by Crown Commercial Services (CCS) via a regularly updated PowerBI dashboard.
Direct procurement with Microsoft lagged far behind AWS at £32 million -- although many of the SIs featured funnel government digital workloads onto Azure and O365.
UK gov't digital spending: Kainos wins big
A further £904 million in digital services was procured by the government under another digital framework designed to give the public sector access to "suppliers who can design, build and provide bespoke digital services using an agile approach."
Here some less widely known names dominated.
At top, earning £92 million in government contracts under the digital outcomes framework was Kainos Software.
Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter! It takes one click <
The FTSE 250 consultancy has been thriving in recent years. Its May 2023 annual report shows that it won a healthy £111 million in UK public sector spend in FY2022 with executives noting that "public sector clients remain committed to key digital transformation programmes."
In second place was Capgemini with £55 million. In third place was London-based Equal Experts with £54 million in government contracts under the digital framework. BJSS and Mastek took fourth and fifth place respectively with £33 million and £31 million under the digital outcomes framework, CCS data shows.
According to figures from Tussell, the UK public sector spent £10.2 billion on IT and communications in 2021 meanwhile. HM Revenue and Customs was the biggest spender; allocating £1.1 billion to modernisation programmes, up 30% on the previous year. The Department of Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care increased their spending to £694 million (up 19%) and £588m (double the previous year).
