The Flemish government is granting the "Operation of ICT services 2015" framework contract to the temporary trading company HB-plus, a partnership between HP Belgium and Belgacom. For this new contract, HP and Belgacom will work together under the new name HB-plus.

The framework contract enters into effect on 10 April 2014, with a transition period running to end-January 2015. From 1 February 2015, all services will be delivered in accordance with the new contracts. The contract term is seven years, and the total value amounts to between 400 and 500 million euro. The "Operation of ICT services" contract is one of four framework contracts, jointly called the 2015 ICT contract, which the Flemish government is awarding in replacement of the current 2008 ICT contract.

The contract makes it possible to also offer ICT services to local and provincial administrations in the Flemish Region. Given the large number of potential customers and the geographic distribution across the whole of Flanders, this will have a major impact on the way in which the services are delivered.

IT as a Service

Through this framework contract, network, workplace and data-center services and projects are offered according to an elaborate "IT as a service" business model. As a result, the administrations pay only for the capacity and service they actually use. Thanks to the flexibility in the consumption of services at fixed unit prices, the government is able to reduce operating costs. This creates more room for investments in innovation.

The partners HP and Belgacom have been the Flemish government's ICT services provider for more than 10 years and this contract confirms the government's confidence in this collaboration. Nevertheless, this framework contract entails a complete renewal, with the focus being on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and workplace management as a service (WPaaS), all of which are provided from a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) solution.

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