The UK government loses faith in Microsoft, as it cancels their £9m deal

The Cabinet Office, a major part of the UK’s government responsible for supporting the country’s prime minister and its affiliates, terminated a £9m deal with Microsoft, according to the official statements. The deal would have seen the supervision of the Microsoft 365 integration, following the migration from Google Workspaces.

According to reports, the deal was planned as a 3-year endeavor from both parties and by the time of the termination, it was reaching its first 9 months.

Following the completion of the Discover phase of this contract and after careful consideration, The Cabinet Office has taken the decision to exercise its right to terminate the Contract under Clause 18.1 of the Terms and conditions.

Cabinet Office

The deal with Microsoft was part of the Falcon IT Platform Refresh and Migration Programme, a £50m initiative of the UK’s government to update, and modernize its IT infrastructure. Last year, Microsoft joined the deal as the migration partner, after the Cabinet partnered up with Capgemini, which was responsible for the technical part of the deal.

While the reasons behind the terminations are not specified, Cabinet Office will keep migrating to Microsoft 365, as its partnership with Google Workspaces is set to end later this year. Capgemini will take the role of the technical partner, but another party will be responsible for the migration now.

The program is set to be completed by March 2025, and it includes a planned pause that the Cabinet can use to discuss and implement new business ideas: the termination of the Microsoft deal is part of this planned pause.

While the Cabinet Office loses faith in Microsoft’s abilities to help with the migration, the institution still wants to migrate to the Microsoft 365 platform, seen by many as an efficient, but less secure productivity platform. And for good reason: in 2022, alone, over 80% of its accounts were hacked.

However, as we mentioned earlier, the reasons for the termination are not known yet. Microsoft might release a statement on it.