It was not one of the vendors who took part in Phase 1 of the G-Cloud programme but Salesforce.com has now joined the G-Cloud framework. It stands out amoung the many vendors who are signing up because it is the type of vendor who could win business through the programme and its presence might just encourage greater use of the framework, which so far has seen little revenue flow (see Approaching the G-Cloud: Leading Supplier propositions). As a cloud pure-play it has the credentials, market awareness and a commodity pricing model that align with the G-Cloud and CloudStore.
It is good news for Salesforce.com because its UK public sector business is a weak spot. It sells via partners, or to agencies but does not have a direct line into UK government as far as we are aware. Joining the programme changes that - assuming G-cloud meets with success. It already has customers such as the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead on its books so any questions over data centre or data storage location issues must have been addressed, ditto security classifications. The arrival of Salesforce.com could put the cat among the pigeons within the UK government supplier landscape as it brings a new and known entrant into play.