HPE and CCS sign memorandum of understanding to accelerate pace of public sector cloud migrations | Computer Weekly

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) centred on the provision of tech giant GreenLake’s proposition to public sector organisations to run their workloads and applications in the cloud.

The MoU will provide public sector organisations with access to HPE’s portfolio of compute products, including its composable, software-defined infrastructure for hybrid cloud environments and high-performance compute (HPC) capabilities for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

The arrangement marks an extension of HPE’s long-standing relationship with CCS and is geared towards helping public sector organisations accelerate the pace of their cloud migrations, said Philip Orumwense, commercial director and chief technology procurement officer at CCS.

“CCS has renewed and extended our relationship with HPE through this updated memorandum of understanding, which will help our customers accelerate their IT modernisation, achieve sustainability and utilise systems that harness the power of data to improve services for citizens,” he said.

“This MoU extends to cover all areas of HPE’s portfolio, including new key areas such as HPE’s pay-as-you-go GreenLake platform – making it easier for all public sector bodies, no matter how big or small, to get value for money.”

As well as supporting public sector organisations on their move to the cloud, the MoU is also geared towards helping them adopt off-premise services in a sustainable way that will not risk enlarging the environmental footprint of their IT estates.

To this point, the MoU covers the provision of free sustainability assessments from HPE for the first 100 public sector customers who seek support with creating their own green IT strategy.

HPE said: “The assessment provides an analysis of energy efficiency, providing guidance on IT transformation considerations, datacentre optimisation, as well as engineering and transformation project services to drive sustainability. 

“Additionally, public sector organisations will have access to annual reports detailing factors like sustainability savings, IT asset up- and recycling, and the value of resold upcycled assets. These will help to quantify the environmental impact and savings achieved through IT asset lifecycle solutions and can be leveraged by the organisations for their sustainability reporting.” 

Andrew Young, vice-president of UK and Ireland sales at HPE, said that with the UK government in the throes of revising its 2050 net-zero emissions strategy, the MoU is timely.

“Pressure on the UK public sector is increasing to deploy sustainable solutions while balancing their IT needs and cost between legacy technology and the government’s cloud strategy,” he said.

“HPE GreenLake can help organisations that are struggling to modernise their systems or with public cloud pricing, providing an alternative, cost-efficient solution that allows them to optimally manage their workloads and data.”