Palo Alto, California-based HP will take over the management of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) desktop infrastructure globally over the next seven years, in what is known as the Firecrest contract. The deal is being structured as a collaboration with the FCO’s internal IT department to design, plan, implement, and operate an IT infrastructure called Future Firecrest, which will cover a roll-out of new hardware and software across the UK and 200 overseas locations over the next two years.
FCO will spend an additional GBP140m ($267.4m) on internal IT costs, which is being structured in such a way that the internal IT department FCO Services will form a jointly managed team, while HP will take on the responsibility for overall management of the service.
