Corsham-based firm Ark Data Centres, which runs the town’s massive Spring Park IT centre, has formed a joint venture with the Government to reduce the costs of hosting a range of public sector computer services.
The new business, Crown Hosting Data Centres, has launched with three customers – the Department for Work & Pensions, the Highways Agency and the Home Office – which are now using its Corsham centre, pictured, and a sister site at Farnborough, Hants.
The Government has said the move will save up to £105m due to its “cross-government” approach to its combined buying power. Government IT outsourcing contracts have a habit of wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. 
Industry insiders see the launch of Crown Hosting Data Centres as a better way of controlling IT spending by government departments.
Ark was launched 10 years ago and has become a leading developer of innovative, highly secure data centres. It owns 75% of Crown Hosting Data Centres with the balance owned by the Government. The new firm aims to increase efficiency and improve value and transparency of hosting services.
It will provide public bodies with a physical space to host their computer servers and systems that are not in the cloud.
In the past, individual departments paid different amounts to either build their own centres or outsource the service as part of their own locked-in IT contracts.
The deal with Crown Hosting Data Centres will allow the Government to tap into the latest advances in industry and improve energy efficiency – using data centres that are equipped with the latest technological advancements such as real time dynamic cooling and unique monitoring systems, all within secure compounds.
Its Spring Park centre in Corsham is on a highly secure 38-acre campus next to MoD facilities and includes 1m sq ft of underground storage space. Ark already handles data centre services for the MoD at Spring Park under a two-year agreement signed last December.
The firm was chosen for the partner in Crown Hosting Data Centres following a competitive tender process, including due diligence and security checks.
The Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office and the Highways Agency will use the service on a ‘pay for what you use’ basis which will avoid the risk of being locked into long-term, inflexible contracts, the Cabinet Office said.
Crown Hosting Data Centres CEO Steve Hall, who is also executive sales and marketing director at Ark, said: “The joint venture company will simplify the data centre services selection process in government and further drive the unbundling of large legacy contracts.
“It provides publicly funded, mandated and regulated organisations with a pre-approved contract that leverages the buying power of the whole of government for the fastest, simplest access to secure data centre services.”
Ark CEO Huw Owen added: “We are extremely proud to be selected as the joint venture partner and look forward to working together to drive real transformational change across the provision of the Government’s data centre services. We are committed to realising the huge potential cost benefits for the UK public purse.”
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the joint venture was part of the Government’s long-term economic plan.
“We’re determined to utilise our unique buying power and become a more intelligent customer,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense for departments to host their servers in different ways and at different costs, and in the past Whitehall wasn’t even sure how many of these centres there were.
“With this new joint venture, we will save millions and be able to access the necessary commercial and technical skills in the market to create a thriving new business that will deliver better services and allow government to share in its future success.”
However, according to Computer Weekly magazine, the initial hopes in Government were that Crown Hosting Data Centres would save up to £530m by 2018, not the £105m in the latest announcement.
