OREANDA-NEWS.  February 14, 2012. Janet has announced that Fujitsu is one of eight suppliers that will be allowed to offer services from data co-location through to cloud infrastructure on a dedicated procurement framework, which will be made available to everyone with a Janet network connection.

Under the agreement, worth an estimated Ј10m - Ј50m, Fujitsu will provide cloud and data centre services to the UK’s education and research communities to meet the increasing demand for cloud infrastructure in this sector.

During the initial four-year term of the contract, Fujitsu will deliver a combination of infrastructure and services to various education and research institutions both on- and off-campus. These services will comprise equipment co-location, virtual servers, IaaS and PaaS alongside complementary professional services to deliver these solutions, providing the education sector with substantial savings in terms of time and money.

“Being awarded a place on the Janet framework is testament to the excellent work that the Fujitsu team has already delivered through various cloud initiatives in the public and private sector,” said Tom Roche, Head of Public Sector Sales at Fujitsu UK & Ireland. “We know we can deliver considerable savings and organisational agility through our vast range of cloud services, which encompasses private, public and hybrid offerings.”

The framework ensures that successful suppliers have been pre-assessed, which will facilitate shorter and less complex procurement cycles for the educational and research community. They will then be able to refine their requirements via a less costly “mini-competition”.

Dan Perry, head of strategic business at Janet said: “We’ve managed to establish a framework, which is agile enough for everyone on the network, in a remarkably short space of time. Institutions are queuing up to use it, with our support, to help them move to cloud computing and data centres.”