Recently the Cabinet Office and the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) have come under pressure to make ongoing commitments to the G-Cloud. With public sectors coming under increasing pressure to save costs, whilst working more efficiently the likes of industry bodies such as EuroCloud are asking the Government to embrace the benefits of cloud adoption to enable rapid deployment, increase agility and promote reductions in IT procurement spending.
Steps are already being taken to draw up a manifesto to encourage cloud vendors and buyers to share best practices and success stories, in order to demonstrate the benefits of cloud technology and using the G-cloud procurement framework.
IT procurement in the UK, is considered to be amongst the highest across Europe. G-cloud figures show that over £124m of procurement has been spent through the framework since 2012, which would equate to around £120m in cost savings. However, the benefits go beyond just saving money, as the framework encourages greater transparency on services, a more flexible and simpler approach and better value for taxpayers. And it is for these reasons that EuroCloud feel the government need to be leading from the front, by enlisting the support of the industry and help vendors to become a successful G-cloud vendor through education.
There is also more to the G-cloud then being a public sector procurement framework, as early indications show that SMEs and Amazon Web Services are fully on board, and are currently offering services via the framework, which opens the door for the private sector market to take advantage of the best practices and products already developed.