Capita and Trustmarque Ultima sign three-year AI services partnership
Capita and Trustmarque Ultima have formalised a three-year strategic partnership aimed at jointly delivering technology, AI, cloud and cybersecurity services to enterprise and public-sector customers in the UK. The agreement was announced on 1 October 2026 and replaces what had been an informal working relationship between the two organisations.
The deal has an unusual backstory. Trustmarque was a Capita subsidiary until 2022, when it was sold and subsequently merged with Ultima to form Trustmarque Ultima. The two businesses have continued to collaborate since the separation, and the new agreement converts that ad hoc arrangement into a coordinated go-to-market model with a formal pipeline of joint opportunities.
The partnership in practice
The commercial logic is straightforward: Capita contributes operational scale and existing public-sector relationships, most notably with Transport for London and the UK Health Security Agency, while Trustmarque Ultima brings a bench of more than 1,000 technical specialists covering cloud, cybersecurity, networking and managed services. The partnership is designed to bridge what is sometimes called the "pilot-to-production" gap, helping customers move AI and other emerging technology from controlled testing into live operational environments.
Matthew Schutz, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Capita, said the combined proposition gives both companies "a much stronger proposition to take to market and creates real opportunities." Simon Williams, Chief Executive of Trustmarque Ultima, said the alliance would give customers "greater access to specialist expertise, innovative technology solutions and managed services."
No contract value, revenue targets or named joint customers were disclosed in the announcement.
Market context and competitive positioning
The UK managed services and systems-integration market is crowded, with both global players and domestic specialists competing for large public-sector outsourcing contracts. Capita itself has been through a period of significant financial restructuring over the past several years, shedding non-core businesses and refocusing on its core services divisions. Re-establishing a formal link with a former subsidiary brings back a degree of technical depth that was lost in the 2022 divestiture.
Trustmarque Ultima, formed from the combination of two established UK resellers, positions itself in the Microsoft and hybrid-cloud ecosystem. That heritage places it alongside competitors such as Softcat, Computacenter and CDW UK, all of which have been expanding managed services and professional services revenue as hardware margin compresses.
For public-sector buyers, the partnership may carry practical appeal: procurement frameworks in central and local government typically reward consortium bids that demonstrate both service-delivery capability and technical accreditation in a single commercial vehicle.
Regulatory tailwinds are also relevant. The UK Government's AI Opportunities Action Plan, published earlier in 2026, commits to accelerating AI adoption across public services, creating demand for precisely the kind of pilot-to-production expertise the Capita and Trustmarque Ultima partnership is structured to provide. Procurement under the Crown Commercial Service frameworks increasingly requires bidders to demonstrate operational track records alongside technical credentials, a combination the two firms are positioning as their joint differentiator.