Mmmm... fresh, delicious tenders: Forget G-Cloud, this £6.5bn Technology Products and Associated Services framework is where it's at

The UK's central government is dangling up to £6.5bn under the noses of resellers to supply commodity hardware, software and services across the British public sector for the next four years.

The pan-government Technology Products and Associated Services framework is due to replace the equally imaginatively titled Technology Products 2 from March, though the framework award was announced this week.

Some 22 suppliers made it onto Lot 1: hardware, software and associated services. It went live after midnight on 11 December following a 10-day standstill period that allows for legal challenges from any disgruntled business that believes it should have made the grade.

Lot 3, which covers Software and associated services, also went live yesterday, and is aimed at software resellers that flog commercial and open-source commodity wares, licences and related services. Twenty-nine resellers made it onto this section of the agreement.

Sources close to the framework said Lot 2 – Hardware and associated services – is due to go live next week. This largely comprises end user devices, infrastructure kit, consumables and peripherals and associated services. Thirty-eight resellers will be vying for individuals contracts here – inclusion on the framework is no guarantee of business.

The final lot is for government techies that want to procure security software and appliances; 11 suppliers were chosen by framework organiser Crown Commercial Services to bid for deals here.

Just to put the latest mega framework into context, £5.19bn in total has been spent by central and local government on technology via the G-Cloud framework since it launched in March 2012.

Many of the usual suspects in the reseller community made it onto the framework, but a couple were noticeable by their absence – looking at you Capita-owned Trustmarque, or indeed Capita itself. The big public sector frameworks always made up a huge chunk of Trustmarque's revenues and we have asked its parent company to comment.

Also missing in action was German giant Cancom.

We have asked Capita and Cancom for an explanation. ®