A £1.305 billion ($1.66bn) cloud computing contract for the UK's Crown Commercial Service is closing to bids on August 21.

The contract is for a public cloud to be used by central government departments and their agencies, the wider public sector, and third-sector organizations in local government, health, education, police, fire and rescue, housing associations, and charities.

According to the contract description, "buyers will be able to fulfill their public cloud computing needs directly from core cloud service suppliers or choose to fulfill their requirements indirectly through resellers who will also make available additional value-adding ancillary services that support the customer's adoption, usage or optimization of the core cloud services."

Lot 1 of the contract is for "core services," which includes integrated infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service delivered via the public Internet and has an estimated value of £670m ($851.2m) over 48 months.

Lot 2 covers "value-added ancillary services" including cloud optimization, economic management of the core services, and the transition away from legacy technology, valued at £450m ($571.7m) over 48 months.

Lot 3 includes "professional services" such as consultancy, training, cloud auditing, strategy development, and road mapping for £85m ($108m).

Finally, Lot 4 has been dubbed "Cloud secure+" and includes value-added ancillary services and professional services as they apply to UK Secret requirements according to the National Cyber Security Centre's higher security classification. £100m ($127m) has been set aside for this.

All bidders for the contract are required to submit a carbon reduction plan along with their proposal, demonstrating how their organization will reach net zero by 2050 in line with the UK government's wider net zero commitment.