T-Systems has taken the lead in the Catalan government’s competition to create and develop a sovereign public cloud. The Deutsche Telekom subsidiary received the maximum score for criteria assessed through qualitative judgement, but the contract has not yet been finally decided: automatic criteria, including price, account for the remaining 51 points and their scores have not been published.
T-Systems tops the qualitative assessment
The Catalan government’s Centre de Telecomunicacions i Tecnologies de la Informació has reported that T-Systems achieved 49 points in the qualitative part of the tender. That total comprises 43 points for its technical solution and six for organisation, the maximum available in this part of the evaluation. NTT Data scored 36.5 points and Telefónica 24.5. The result puts T-Systems ahead after the assessment of the bidders’ proposed cloud services and operating models, although it does not by itself establish the final winner of the competition.
Judgement-based criteria test the proposed service
The qualitative criteria are those that cannot be assessed automatically through mathematical formulae. In this procurement, they cover the cloud-computing services catalogue, interoperability and application programming interfaces, the use of open standards, and how the catalogue could evolve or adapt to specific needs. They also include the proposed approach to identity integration and the management of metadata. For bidders, the mechanism means that technical design and organisational arrangements are examined by evaluators rather than reduced solely to a price calculation.
Price and formula-based scoring remain decisive
The contracting committee has also opened the part of the bids assessed through automatic formulae, which includes the financial offer. The public body has identified which requirements the tenderers meet, but has not yet made the scores public. This section carries 51 of the 100 points available in the overall assessment, leaving open the possibility that the ranking will change when the remaining results are known. T-Systems therefore has a clear lead on qualitative scoring, but the source does not report a final award.
A long-term cloud infrastructure project
The public cloud competition is the Catalan executive’s most important investment in digital infrastructure in recent years, with a value of €481 million over eight years. The figure includes VAT and an additional 20% for possible contract modifications. The initiative forms part of the Govern’s strategy under Salvador Illa to reduce external technology dependencies and increase public control over data and infrastructure. The article places that policy in a European cloud market where about 70% is controlled by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Contract value | €481 million |
| Contract period | Eight years |
| T-Systems qualitative score | 49 points |
| NTT Data qualitative score | 36.5 points |
| Telefónica qualitative score | 24.5 points |
| Automatic-criteria weighting | 51 of 100 points |
| Potential contract modifications | 20% additional |
T-Systems achieved 49 points in the qualitative part of the tender, but 51 points remain to be scored through automatic criteria.
WHY IT MATTERS
The tender illustrates how a public cloud competition can combine judgement-based technical assessment with formula-based scoring. A bidder may lead on architecture, interoperability and organisational quality while still needing to compete on the financial and other automatic criteria before the final result is known.
Reported from expansion.com, 2026-10-09. The Tender Wire is published by Otnox.
