The government is expected to announce that 2847 suppliers have been awarded places on the government’s G-Cloud 9 framework which is set to go live on today.
Suppliers who have been successful should have been told ten days ago, so if the post has not arrived then chances are you have not got in.
G-Cloud 9 is split into three Lots: Cloud Hosting, Cloud Software and Cloud Support. The 2,847 suppliers on the framework compares with the 1,616 firms on G-Cloud 7, and 1,908 on G-Cloud 8.
Suppliers will no longer be able to conduct business through G-Cloud 7 and G-Cloud 8 frameworks from today.
One of the changes in the system is that contracts signed through the framework can last longer than two years for the first time.
There are two optional one-year periods, so a maximum of four years.
Microsoft’s their agreements such as the Enterprise Subscription Agreement are a three-year period so it does allow for enterprise agreements that were previously exclusively online agreements to be done through G-Cloud.
It is also expected that a lot of Microsoft business going through G-Cloud.
The most recent G-Cloud figures on the CCS website show total spending through the framework to date to be just under £1.7bn as of November 2016, 77 per cent of which was spent by central government and the remaining 23 per cent by the wider public sector.
“G-Cloud frameworks are refreshed every six to eight months.
Last year the government announced that the ninth iteration G-Cloud would be built from scratch, but drew criticism from suppliers for not spending enough time researching how the framework should be improved.