AWS Poised for £1 Billion Home Office Contract Amid Vendor Lock-in Fears

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is positioned to secure a Home Office contract for public cloud hosting valued at over £1 billion when VAT is included, according to reporting from The Register. A planning notice published October 30 estimates the contract value at £881,621,007, nearly doubling the approximately £450 million AWS received for the existing 2023 contract.

The proposed agreement would run from December 2027 to December 2029, with a potential extension through December 2031. While the UK government has pledged to support small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and recently added local suppliers to the G-Cloud 15 framework, data from BidSkim indicates AWS currently captures 75 percent of government cloud contract spending, totaling roughly £1.22 billion. By comparison, Microsoft Azure holds contracts worth £355 million, Google Cloud £47 million, and Oracle Cloud $15 million.

This procurement comes as the UK government grapples with systemic reliance on American hyperscalers. The Register reports that a 2024 Cabinet Office internal document admitted that vendor lock-in has inhibited the government's negotiating power and created risk concentration. Furthermore, the Open Rights Group has warned that the UK is overly dependent on US tech firms for critical operations. A supplier source cited by The Register claimed the government ignores capable UK providers and is instead influenced by professional services companies to favor hyperscalers in exchange for migration and integration partnerships.