The Department of Work and Pensions is in the process of consulting the market regarding a two year contract to provide hosting services.

The contract is believed to be worth between 29.5 million and £120 million and is set to replace and exiting deal with HP.

HP currently manages two data centres, 3,000 physical servers, 465 virtual servers and 1,000 terabytes of storage space.

Selected bidders will be tasked with providing value for money, service transformation and developing increased flexibility.

The service itself is likely to be made up of multiple contracts, in keeping with the department’s policy of encouraging SME participation and cost effectiveness.