G-Cloud became a reality on Sunday as the Government’s CloudStore, the online appstore for cloud-based ICT services, opened for business. In the accompanying rhetoric Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said the G-Cloud framework will revolutionise the way public sector organisations buy IT services. CloudStore will enable public sector organisations to buy “off-the-shelf” IT services on a “pay-as-you-go” basis rather than having to develop their own systems.
For this first tranche of the G-Cloud service catalogue the Government received bids from nearly 300 suppliers offering a total of around 1,700 services. It’s already clear that the government is delivering on its promise of levelling the playing field for SMEs with G-Cloud. Of the suppliers on the framework around 50% are SMEs. Indeed, CloudStore itself was built by UK SME SolidSoft in just four weeks. And we’ve been inundated with press releases from SMEs that are proud of their place on the framework.
After a quick play with CloudStore (see http://www.gov.uk/cloudstore) it’s clear it is designed very much as a ‘catalogue’ for commodity products – it’s difficult to compare companies on the basis of anything but price. It will undoubtedly drive much faster adoption of cloud services, provide greater visibility for SMEs, lead to a more competitive market and save the government money in the long term. But in the short term, my concern is whether some of the smaller suppliers on the framework have the capability to deliver the services required reliably at volume. We’ll have more analysis and detail for subscribers in UKHotViewsExtra tomorrow.