Tag: Skyscape

Suppliers supporting G-Cloud 7

Posted on November 27, 2015 by - News

cloudThe number of suppliers using the G-Cloud 7 has jumped 11 percent even though some are concerned that it will help them win business.

G-Cloud 7 went live this week, and according to the award notice, the number of suppliers on the scheme reached 1,615, up 11 per cent on the 1,453 which were accredited on G-Cloud 6.

For those who came in late, the UK Government G-Cloud is an initiative targeted at easing procurement by government departments for cloud systems. The G-Cloud consists of is a series of framework agreements with suppliers, from which public sector organisations can buy services without needing to run a full tender or competition.

It started in 2012 and by May 2013 there were over 700 suppliers—over 80% of which were small and medium enterprises.

As you would expect, G-Cloud 7 has the usual suspects such as SCC, Computacenter, Kelway, Memset, Agilisys, Skyscape and Liberata.

Initially there were some problems after suppliers moaned about the framework placing restrictions on how much they can scale up their services, but it looked like the expected boycott never happened.

This is probably because filling in the paperwork for a G-Cloud application takes months and once you started you might as well finish.

But the strange thing about the framework is that few will make much dosh on it unless their sales teams are entirely focused on G-Cloud business.

“Public Cloud First” gets round of applause

Posted on May 9, 2013 by - News

cloud 1A cloud service provider has welcomed the government’s “Public Cloud First” mandate.

Earlier this month the Cabinet Office confirmed that the cloud would be mandated as the first choice for all new IT purchases in government, as part of moves to push more departments into using commodity cloud services.

The announcement coincided with the third G-Cloud supplier framework going live, offering more than 700 suppliers and over 5,000 services to the UK public sector. Around 80 percent of all suppliers were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), said the Cabinet Office.

A recent survey by Fasthosts found  that over two thirds of small and medium businesses in the UK have said that adoption of the cloud will be an important factor to contribute to the growth of their business in the next 12 months, with the same number claiming that the cloud was “extremely important” to their business growth strategy.

Skyscape agreed claiming that both government announcements were “excellent news for the UK public sector.”

Phil Dawson, CEO of Skyscape said that by putting the ‘Cloud First’, the Government was further demonstrating the “growing confidence” in G-Cloud, where suppliers have proven that highly secured, resilient utility services can be rapidly deployed at transparent price points, helping to drive innovation and competition.

He added the G-Cloud Programme had “quite simply started a revolution in the way that the UK public sector deployed ICT.”

“With the arrival of Giii, the Framework will continue to make this process easier, helping to broaden the market and providing a platform for SMEs, such as Skyscape, to market their services to the public sector,” he said.