Glasgow has awarded a £44.9 million contract to DataVita to transform and maintain the council’s core digital infrastructure, including the compute and storage services that underpin day-to-day public services.

The initial term runs for five years and nine months and began on October 8, 2025. The contract includes extension options and, if taken to its maximum permitted duration of more than 10 years, the total value is projected at between £80 million and £110 million.

The deal will see DataVita deliver services from its Tier III-certified data centres in Scotland, covering primary and disaster recovery environments, management of physical and virtual servers, and scalable storage. The scope also includes backup systems designed to provide additional protection, including immutable copies.

DataVita will also integrate with the council’s Service Integration and Management (SIAM) function, as Glasgow moves towards a multi-source approach for IT delivery, with multiple strategic partners involved.

For the council, the aim is a more resilient platform for an increasingly complex ‘digital estate’ – and one that can support a multi-source model for IT delivery, rather than relying on a single route for core services.

Social and economic benefits have also been positioned as part of the contract’s wider impact, with up to 25 new roles expected to be created, including apprenticeships.

Danny Quinn, Managing Director of DataVita, noted, “We are incredibly proud to be selected as a strategic partner for Glasgow City Council. We are focused on delivering exceptional value and innovation over the initial term and see this as the start of a long-term partnership. 

“Our mission is to provide a resilient, secure, and sustainable digital infrastructure that will not only meet the city’s needs today but also support its ambitions for the future. This award is a testament to our team’s expertise and our commitment to investing in Scotland’s technology ecosystem.”

Paul Leinster, Chair of the Digital Glasgow Board from Glasgow City Council, added, “The essential services that we deliver to citizens and the value they add to people’s lives are always our first priorities. Increasingly, though, we rely on a complex digital estate to deliver those services, and this contract will ensure we have a secure, resilient platform to support what is an incredibly diverse range of work.

“DataVita brings proven capability here in Scotland, and their commitment to renewable, energy-efficient operations aligns with Glasgow’s ambitions for a cleaner, greener city.”

A wider push for digital capacity in Scotland

The contract also lands at a moment when Scotland is trying to turn digital infrastructure into an economic growth story – particularly as data centres become increasingly tied to AI ambitions and public sector modernisation.

In January, Lanarkshire was named the UK’s latest AI Growth Zone, with the UK Government backing for expansion around DataVita’s campus in the area, and a delivery partnership with CoreWeave. 

The plans for the Lanarkshire zone are expected to include 100MW of AI-ready data centre capacity, more than 1GW of renewable energy infrastructure connected via private wire, and adjacent ‘innovation parks’ aimed at attracting compute-hungry industries.

DataVita already has an array of other data centres located around Scotland, with one located in the heart of Glasgow’s business district and International Financial Services District, while the other is located around 11 miles to the east of the city. The firm bills itself as ‘the UK’s most sustainable data centre provider’, which has proven crucial to gaining public and local government backing in Scotland. In fact, just last week, a planned data centre was rejected by Edinburgh City Council because it couldn’t showcase its ‘green’ credentials.