I have worked in tv news and weather production off and on over the years, I don't think it's a big surprise that the BBC have dropped the UKMO.
There had been rumours for years that the BBC weren't entirely happy with the service provided by the UKMO.
I doubt his decision will not have been an easy one for the BBC, this tender process has probably been lengthy, with submissions from many bidders and this announcement suggests that the UKMO bid was not good enough to retain the business, that's the commercial reality.
Knowing how important the weather is to us Brits I don't think the BBC would replace the current service with something inferior, they will be wanting a superior one.
The weather industry is a very competitive GLOBAL business, I believe there are a number of companies who could replace the UKMO and do a very good, even better job than the UKMO, the biggest of these provide complete data services, meteorologists and very sophisticated tv graphics systems, some with offices and meteorologists in the UK.
The companies speculated to be involved are familiar, Metra from NZ currently provide the graphical system for the current UKMO BBC service, Meteogroup seem to be a current favourite, are a big European company. There are many more - WeatherOne, Trivis, Storm Geo and the big US companies like Accuweather or The Weather Company group which is comprised of The Weather Channel, WSI, Wunderground, Weather Central.
From experience and people I still know who work in weather production I believe these are the current UK tv weather providers:
BBC - UKMO / Metra
ITV - UKMO
Channel 4 - Meteogroup
Channel 5 - Weather Central part of The Weather Company group
Sky - I think is StormGeo / Viz (which is a very big tv industry graphics system)
S4C - Weather Central part of The Weather Company group
UTV - UKMO