The FINANCIAL — The European Commission Directorate-General for Informatics (EC DIGIT) has selected a consortium of Accenture, Comparex and Microsoft to provide public cloud services to institutions in the European Union (E.U.), enabling access to new cloud and digital capabilities for public services. The contract is for two years with the option for two one-year extensions.
Accenture and Comparex will lead the consortium, with Microsoft as subcontractor. The consortium will provide the public cloud services under two lots – one for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capabilities, and a second for platforms as a service (PaaS) capabilities – using the Accenture Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure technologies.
The contract follows an inter-institutional call for tenders (DIGIT/R2/PO/2014/043) by EC DIGIT, which resulted in the awarding of multiple framework contracts to several companies and consortia through open-market competition. For the execution of the IaaS public cloud contract, EC DIGIT will reopen a competition among five selected contractors, and for execution of the PaaS public cloud contract, EC DIGIT will reopen a competition among four selected contractors, according to Accenture.
The consortium was selected after a competitive tendering process, overseen by EC DIGIT, which required vendors to meet a stringent list of security and technical requirements. The Accenture Cloud Platform running Microsoft Azure technology met all E.U. requirements for a secure hyper-scale public cloud capability.
“This collaboration between Accenture, Comparex and Microsoft will enable European institutions to procure cloud services in a fast, convenient and flexible way,” said Dany Delepierre, managing director of Accenture’s Health & Public Service practice in Belgium and Luxembourg. “The Accenture Cloud Platform will deliver enhanced flexibility and governance while facilitating the secure development of new applications and the transfer of existing applications into the cloud.”
Accenture already delivers IT services to several EU Institutions, including eu-LISA and the Taxation and Customs Union Directorate General.
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