Thanks to the crushing defeat of the Labour party at the recent general election, the National Grid can continue to live under private ownership. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only risk looming over the company, and now the firm is looking to solve another major issue it faces – the risk of its IT infrastructure becoming outdated. 

That’s why the National Grid has announced a series of IT services contracts that could thoroughly modernise the company’s infrastructure, in a series of deals worth a combined total of £159 million. These contracts would see the National Grid migrate some of its services to the cloud, while it will also rely on colocation facilities rather than simply running its own data centres. 

The deal, as revealed by Computer Business Review, will help the grid deliver ‘next generation’ capabilities, although it’s not exactly clear what the National Grid has planned for its existing mainframes. The company could of course go all-in on the cloud, or it could modernise its existing hardware and use a mix of cloud services and local data 

Whoever nabs the contracts will have to meet some very stringent requirements. That’s because the National Grid doesn’t just operate in the UK, with the company having a significant presence in the Eastern USA. That means any company working to modernise the firm’s IT infrastructure will have to comply with local regulations in both the UK and USA, as well as operate in those countries. 

Of course, it’s not known whether one company will win all the contracts from the National Grid, or whether the firm will choose different companies to provide different services. What we do know is that there will be four contracts; data centre colocation, managed services, mainframes, and data centre migration. 

In a notice put out by the National Grid, the firm noted, “National Grid is looking to deliver next generation capabilities in data centre, networks, and improve the operating model. This will enable the secure provision of reliable services to the business,” the notice states.

“Operationally it’s key that National Grid achieve improved service delivery speed, scalability, and flexibility delivered [through] the optimisation of data centre footprint, automation of operations and the developing and implementing hybrid cloud architectures that meet National Grid’s current needs and can flex to meet our future needs.”