Under a new discount agreement, discounted rates for Google Cloud services will be offered to UK public sector bodies including the National Health Service (NHS).
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Google Cloud and Crown Commercial Service (CCS) of the United Kingdom will see local councils, NHS, charities, government departments, and other qualifying public sector bodies able to apply for discounted rates to the Google Cloud Platform.
The eligible organizations will be provided access to the full suite of Google Cloud, including analytics, artificial intelligence, application modernization and development, infrastructure, and collaboration solutions. It also includes access to the managed and serverless offerings of Google Cloud, including its hybrid and multi-cloud Anthos platform.
Mark Palmer, head of public sector EMEA at Google Cloud, said: “This is a significant milestone for us, as we see the results of our focused investment in cloud services and solutions primed and tailored for the public sector.” Palmer added: “The UK public sector is a major focus for Google Cloud, and this is an opportunity to further support Her Majesty’s government in their digital transformation.”
Simon Hansford, the chief executive of UKCloud, which works with Google Cloud, welcomed the agreement between CCS and Google. “It’s great to see more diversity in the market; it hasn’t been there to date, but it needs to be there.” “The public sector cloud computing market has become a bit of an oligopoly.”
Google Cloud said this agreement would “provide the best value and terms for public sector agencies investing in cloud technology” while also encouraging digital transformation and innovation in the UK public sector.
The MoU between Google Cloud and Crown Commercial Service follows a similar agreement between the UK government and Microsoft in late April that sees all eligible public sector organizations in the United Kingdom offered discounted access to Microsoft Azure business tools.
Google has agreements with a number of organizations in the NHS, a number of which were transferred to Google following its acquisition of British artificial intelligence firm, DeepMind. Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust is utilizing the Google Cloud Platform as part of its work with Streams, an app that is designed to alert doctors to early signs of acute kidney injury in patients and prevent their health from deteriorating further.
