Yesterday, the Cabinet Office announced the first “major” infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) sale through the Cloudstore. The Government Digital Service (GDS) has selected Skyscape Cloud Services to host the new Gov.uk platform.
Gov.uk (currently in beta) will replace Direct.gov. It is likely to rationalise 600+ websites and is set to “revolutionise the way citizens access information and services online”. Skyscape will provide compute-as-a-service (including test and dev) as well as storage-as-a-service.
The G-Cloud team is heralding the contract as evidence that “government is ready to embrace low cost utility cloud services and is buying from SMEs (rather than the larger SIs which it has traditionally relied on for these services)”. Although the contract value has yet to be revealed, we have spoken to Skyscape CEO, Phil Dawson, who confirmed that the initial call-off (covering the rest of this financial year) could be worth at least £300K.
Skyscape has big ambitions. Indeed, if the company tracks its business plan it won’t be classed as an SME for long. TechMarketView subscribers can find out more in UKHotViewsExtra. Everyone else should contact Deb Seth to see what they are missing out on.