Public Sector
London NHS organisations combine on new IT shared services contract
London NHS organisations combine in new IT shared services contract
By Anh Nguyen | Computerworld UK | Published 13:55, 18 January 12
Two NHS organisations in North London have signed contracts with 2e2 for its managed ICT services.
In a series of contracts worth £4 million, Haringey Community Services and NHS North Central London Cluster will join Camden Primary Care Trust (PCT), Islington PCT and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust on an existing managed IT services deal in the area.
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David Thomas, deputy director of IT for the NHS North Central London Cluster, said that the contract with 2e2 has helped it save around 25 percent in costs, compared with the previous in-house IT service.
"Now we have an efficient and cost-effective IT service. For example, when it was an internal service, our email system went down at least once every six months, and once it was down for several days.
"2e2 were able to provide us with a stable platform."
NHS North Central London Cluster's contract with 2e2 – which serves around 1,000 users - began in June 2011 and will last two years. The other NHS contracts with the IT services provider range between two and five years.
By saving money, the Cluster has also been able to reinvest some of its funds back into IT, for example, by virtualising its servers with VMware.
In addition, as part of the contract 2e2 relocated 240 servers to a new data centre that it helped to design and commission.
