Bank of England expands data and cloud framework by £26.7 million after revising data strategy

Dependent on SAP and Oracle, UK central bank wants to modernize in the cloud, refresh data strategy

The UK central bank is expecting a 45 percent hike in the maximum cost of support services as it moves to the cloud and executes a revised data and analytics plan.

In an official notice, the Bank of England said it would increase the maximum spending of a framework deal for a raft of services including support for its complex configuration of SAP, "in particular Business Warehouse" and interoperability between multi-cloud environments and on-prem and shared datacenters.

The upper limit of the deal was increased from £60 million ($82 million) when it was awarded in September last year to £86.7 million ($118 million) in a non-competitive award last week – a rise of £26.7 million ($36 million).

The tender document said the Bank wanted to amend the original Technology Support Services Framework (TSSF) framework contract "due to a necessary increase in its value… required to cover continued costs of existing projects."

In 2023, the Bank set a spending limit when it launched a competition for a raft of technology support services. Included in the call to tender was the requirement to "retain high levels of skills in SAP, in particular Business Warehouse. The Bank retains a highly configured estate with complex and high value logistics."

It also asked for "suppliers that can deliver services covering multi cloud environments and the interoperability between them and to on premise and shared datacenters. Suppliers would also need to have an understanding about consumption models, reserved instances, cloud license management and FinOps. The Bank has a variety of datacenters and cloud service providers and will seek to review this over time. It is keen to improve consumption based spend and reporting…"

Among nine lots, the bank also asked for the vendors to manage enterprise systems, including ERP solutions, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Dynamics 365. "The Bank will be seeking to understand where the supply chain can take a more outcome-based approach to service provision," it said. Additionally, there was a request for help in data science, architecture, strategy, and engineering capabilities.

The Bank appointed suppliers to the framework in September last year. They include Accenture, Infosys, Telstra, and Civica.

In 2022, it also awarded Version 1 – a £8.7 million ($12 million) contract to "deliver a step change in the capabilities and value delivered by the Finance, Procurement and Recruitment functions in the Bank, leveraging the existing Oracle Cloud tool set to drive sustainable business change." The value of that deal was also increased – in February 2025, by more than £4 million ($5 million).

In 2022, Peter Eckley, head of data and analytics strategy at the Bank of England, told The Register that at the time, the bank relied on an on-premises data stack, based on a Hadoop data lake and a SQL data warehouse. It uses a gamut of analytics tools including Microsoft Excel, R, Python, Git for version control, and Tableau for data visualization.

In the bank's 2024 annual report [PDF], David Roberts, chair of court (the bank's board) said it was in the process of modernizing its approach to data and technology.

He said the bank was implementing "revised technology and data strategies" which would "have far reaching impacts on the way the Bank works."

The revised strategy followed a report from the Independent Evaluation Office's (IEO), published in October 2023, which highlighted that the bank needed to do more in the coming years to meet its ambitions. As part of its revised plans, the bank said it had "designed a target technology architecture to enable a wide range of modernization outcomes for the Bank."

It had also piloted migration of some of its current data and analytics services to the cloud. "This has increased capacity, enabling more users and projects to use the service. It has helped us to prepare for, and accelerate, the building of more Bank wide capabilities on the Cloud, and it has paved the way for work to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) could contribute to our work in the future," it said.

"We have now formalized a cloud strategy, which will allow us to make strategic choices about how and when we modernize further aspects of our estate, including data and beyond," the report said [PDF].

The Bank of England was founded in 1694, beginning life as a banker to the government. It issued its first banknotes in 1725, the highest denomination being £90. It was given responsibility for setting interest rates in 1997 by the Tony Blair Labour government. In 2013, the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) was established as part of the new system of regulation brought in to improve financial stability after the financial crisis. ®