Azure/365 Support and Consultancy

Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) is a national facility for collaborative R&D exploring and developing new approaches to the discovery and proof of well targeted medicines, diagnostics and biomarkers.

Funded by Innovate UK, an agency of the UK government, MDC are an independent not-for-profit company bringing together a fragmented UK sector of industry, academia, charities, technologists, services, finance companies, SMEs and start-ups who together can turn good science into new, high value products.

By sharing problems, rare expertise and assets we support the growth of this new community through a time of radical business and national change.

MDC's requirements were as follows: • Azure • Architecture Consultancy • Microsoft office 365 • 24/7 support • Cost management • Training For this procurement, MDC used the UK government Digital Marketplace to buy cloud services through the G-Cloud framework.

This framework is an agreement between the UK government and suppliers.

Buying services through frameworks is faster and cheaper than entering into individual procurement contracts.

It is also a legally compliant route to market.

All public sector organisations, including agencies and arm's length bodies, can use the Digital Marketplace.

In order to confirm that MDC was indeed able to use the Digital Marketplace, a search was undertaken of the customer unique reference number (URN) list, which details eligible organisations.

It was confirmed that Medicines Discovery Catapult is on the URN list and its URN is 10581476.

The contract is for both MDC and Light House Laboratory (LHL) requirements.

The contract term was for an initial 12 months period from June 2021 (with the possibility of a further two (2) one (1) year extensions).