HP will soon be replacing BT as the biggest IT supplier to the UK government. This has been made possible by the friendly takeover of EDS by HP for £7bn.

The Kable research, ‘The supplier landscape in the UK public sector marketplace 2007’, indicates that combined ICT spending of £2.235bn with EDS and HP by the state sector is higher by £0.135bn than that with BT. It ranks EDS as the second-largest ICT supplier to the UK state sector, followed by Fujitsu Services, Capgemini and HP.

Among the top 20, CSC made significant progress of moving from 19th place in 2006 to 10th place in 2007. Its could generate a business of £400m from state-sector ICT largely owing to two of the five local service provider contracts - earlier awarded to Accenture under the NHS National Programme for IT. Accenture slid from the top 20 list for this reason. The top 20 have accounted for 70 per cent of the £12bn spending made by the UK state sector.

Nick Jotischky, senior analyst at Kable, opines that use of IT in the public sector is on the rise and technology is being used as an enabler to drive government policy.