The Government Procurement Service has put out a framework tender for hosting services worth between £100m and £1bn.
The four-year framework for IT services will include consulting, software development, internet and support. It will have a minimum of 12 participants and it will be used across central and local government, said the Government Procurement Service.
The public sector is in need of hosting services for large and complex application environments, it said.
"This procurement is targeted at provision of the applications and services required to make available the government's large, mission critical high availability services that utilise complex infrastructure with server or mainframe based technology typically hosted in one or more traditional data centre environments," said the Government Procurement Service.
The framework is designed to drive towards standardisation in accordance with the published Government ICT strategy, said the tender.
No further details were provided about the specific services the Government Procurement Service is seeking. The tender deadline is 20 August 2012.
The note follows a recent £4bn framework award for IT hardware across the public sector, which includes desktops, laptops, tablets, servers, printers and most commonly used peripherals.
