Cloud based enterprise collaboration and content management platform provider, Huddle, has announced another significant milestone in its relationship with UK Government.
As we have previously commented (see ‘Huddle set to give Microsoft a run for its SharePoint money’ and ‘Will Huddle displace Microsoft in UK Government?’), Huddle is already well-established in UK Government citing c70% of UK central government organisations and c45% of local authorities and arms-length bodies as clients. Today, the company has announced the launch of Huddle IL3 – “the first commercial public cloud service to be modified and accredited for pan-government collaboration on RESTRICTED data”.
Huddle has worked closely with the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) Services to arrive at a collaboration solution for those areas of UK Government operating within higher security levels. FCO’s Digital Diplomacy Group was already a Huddle client (see FCO’s website) and FCO Services will now host the software-as-a-service (SaaS) application (IL3) on its FCO Services’ Government Secure Application Environment (GSAE) cloud infrastructure.
We are sure there will be shouts of dismay at this development (not least from quarters such as the Daily Mail!). Even the FT opens its article (see here) on the announcement with a sentence ending “among the first in the world to use cloud computing for work on classified government documents”. Such wording will, of course, cause a stir. It is in situations like this that the difference between “public” and “private” cloud becomes so important. The application isn’t being hosted outside Government; it is being hosted on FCO Services' private cloud infrastructure. And let’s face it, how secure was the previous method of back and forth email exchange for collaboration, with the information held on individual desktop or laptop computers (potentially left on trains!)?
But getting back to Huddle – the important point is that the company has now opened up its potential market in UK Government, giving it more potential to grow its existing UK public sector revenues. Seems like a pretty smart move to us.