Strategic Blue works with an array of customers across many different sectors. As an account manager at Strategic Blue for the past few years, I’ve worked with companies in the commercial world, education sector and government bodies. Without a doubt, customers with the most complex scenarios are those from the education sector or government bodies. These customers often come with nuances, processes and complexities which make account management challenging but extremely rewarding at the same time.
One of the challenges for public sector organisations, is fitting into the cloud vendor and cloud industry-standard processes. For example, whilst it may be typical of a commercial organisation to sign up to a multi-million contract in return for a discount, such activities can prove difficult for UK public sector organisations to make the most of. Even making the most out of smaller commitments in return for a discount, such as Reserved Instances or Saving Plans, can be a nightmare for public sector organisation procurement teams.
This is why Strategic Blue was delighted to welcome the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA) released in late 2020 by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has become a hugely popular deal across government and public sector organisations. It quickly became apparent that the OGVA is the type of deal that is going to fit into these types of organisations, and we’re sure will continue to be a Strategic Blue customer favourite.
The One Government Value Agreement
The OGVA is a (reasonably new) agreement between AWS and the UK government, which is expected to accelerate cloud adoption across the public sector and is a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between AWS and the Crown Commercial Service (CCS).
The OGVA is rather unique when compared to other AWS spend commitments. It treats participating UK government and public sector organisations as a single client. Through this, the OGVA is able to offer significant cost savings to these bodies that rival or surpass that of large commercial counterparts. The level of discount, for what is an incredibly modest spend commitment, has previously been unheard of when compared to the commercial sector. On top of this, those who sign up to the OGVA also get an array of training support made available, which will hugely benefit thousands of civil servants across government and enable further cloud adoption.
The One Government Value Agreement and Strategic Blue
Strategic Blue’s objective as a cloud FinOps specialist and AWS consulting partner, is to help all types of organisations access the public cloud and relevant programs in a way that best suits them. With the OGVA, this is no different – Strategic Blue is working with all of its public sector customers to help them access the OGVA discount in a way that suits them, and provides its regular cloud FinOps expertise on top.
If you’re a government organisation that’s interested in learning more about the OGVA, and whether or not you’d be eligible to receive the discounts and training, please reach out to Strategic Blue who can not only advise, but can also best position the OGVA to suit your needs.
To put it simply, Strategic Blue believes AWS and CCS have done a fantastic job at putting together an offer like the OGVA that fits so perfectly with government organisations and we’re incredibly excited to continue to promote OGVA adoption.