Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the latest supplier to enter the controversial £500 million race to become the hyperscaler responsible for overseeing HM Revenue & Customs' (HMRC) 10-year data center decommissioning project, Computer Weekly has learned.
As Computer Weekly previously reportedA government tax collection agency needs a hyperscale service provider to manage the migration of on-premises servers from three Fujitsu data centers to the cloud.
“The objective of the program is to cease all services from the three managed data centers and decommission all remaining infrastructure during the current contract period with the existing data center hosting provider (June 2028),” HMRC said in the tender documents.
“The program… determined that modern hyperscaler cloud technologies would be the preferred transition solution, while supporting HMRC's strategic objectives without impacting business continuity or causing prohibitive change costs.”
HMRC procurement documents indicate that the winner of the contract is expected to be announced at the end of April 2026, but sources with knowledge of the procurement process say AWS has recently become the only supplier vying for the contract.
HMRC previously confirmed in June 2025 that AWS, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle had been approached to participate in the request for information portion of the multi-stage tender process for the deal.
At some point over the past few months, Oracle and Microsoft withdrew from the process, while AWS, Google and IBM were tentatively shortlisted. “Three major vendors were selected and preliminarily excluded to participate in the tender: AWS, IBM and Google… but now IBM has pulled out of the process, and Google has also pulled out,” the source said.
Unfair bias
Concerns about the tender being unfairly skewed towards AWS are said to have been a factor in the suppliers' decision to withdraw.
The sources also claim that HMRC has rejected suggestions from vendors that adopting a hybrid cloud could be a better and more cost-effective way to migrate off-premise, rather than a wholesale move to the public cloud.
The recommendation was made, Computer Weekly understands, because of how much legacy IT the agency wants to move out of its three data centers.
Computer Weekly reached out to the Google Cloud team to confirm the withdrawal from the tender process and the reasons why, but were told the company could not comment further at this time.
The IBM team had not responded to a similar request for comment at the time of publication, despite several attempts to contact them.
An AWS spokesperson also told Computer Weekly that it had nothing to disclose about this story.
“So you are left with a situation where HMRC launches a tender for half a billion pounds and only one party bids for it, meaning there is no commercial competition at all for the contract,” the source added.
Concerns about the contract related to anti-competition were previously raised in Computer Weekly by participants in the UK cloud market, with objections relating to a specific request by HMRC to provide a “hyperscaler” for the project.
“HMRC is leaving itself open to legal challenges given that the term 'hyperscaler' is widely associated with global cloud players in the US,” a former government IT adviser who spoke to Computer Weekly on condition of anonymity said at the time.
Projected length the project also raised eyebrowshowever, there are concerns about the risk of supplier lock-in associated with a 10-year contract.
The idea that AWS is the only supplier vying for the contract also comes on the heels of the Treasury Select Committee questioning HMRC's reliance on US AWS infrastructure after the agency operation was interrupted on October 20, 2025. Amazon experienced a 14-hour outage at its US data center.
Computer Weekly referred to HMRC the claims made in this article that other suppliers had pulled out of the procurement process, and also asked for a response to the anti-competitive concerns raised about it.
In response, an HMRC spokesperson said: “We follow public procurement rules when awarding contracts, ensuring a competitive and fair tender process and value for money for taxpayers. Once contracts are approved, we publish details of them.” Search for contracts for transparency.”
According to the government's own Digital Marketplace data, which tracks sales made through the G-Cloud procurement framework, almost half (45%) of the total £811 million of cloud services purchased by HMRC under this procurement agreement was spent on AWS, with sales totaling £367.25 million.
