Happy Birthday For G-Cloud As It Shows SMEs Its Silver Lining

G-Cloud is two-years old and seems to be achieving the Government’s aim to offer SMEs a better opportunity to pitch for government infrastructure business.

The latest figures published show that 61 percent of sales by volume have been taken by SMEs ,and the sales of cloud technologies have quadrupled since the government announced its Cloud First policy with the launch of the third stage of G-Cloud in May last year.

Silver lining

Phil Dawson, CEO of Skyscape Cloud Services, has seen his business grow since it joined the government framework. “I echo the comments recently made by former White House CIO Vivek Kundra who stated his belief that G-Cloud could be the new procurement model for governments across the world. What an outstanding achievement in the space of just two years,” he said.

In 2010, approximately 6.5 percent of government procurement spend was going to SMEs and this has increased over eight-fold to 56 percent. With G-Cloud, services are easier to commission and this has encouraged SMEs that have never done business with the public sector to pitch in. The result is that there range of services available has increased by a factor of seven, from four times the number of suppliers.

“These figures evidence that the G-Cloud programme is catalysing change within UK government ICT on an unprecedented scale, despite experiencing the teething problems and challenges common to all new initiatives. Since then, G-Cloud has certainly redressed the balance, demonstrating that with a legal and compliant route to market, clearly established accreditation standards, coupled with agile procurement that is fair to SMEs, the government’s SME target of 25 percent of public sector spend by 2015 can be significantly surpassed,” Dawson said.

There is a hidden  number of SMEs involved in G-Cloud because of the number of organisations like Skyscape that act in concert with numerous channel partners. With a total spend of £92.6 million to date, the Framework has provided a much-needed source of income in a difficult financial climate.

“The significant wins we’ve secured via G-Cloud have enabled our continued business growth and as a company, we whole-heartedly support the Framework and recognise its many benefits for both buyers and our fellow providers in creating a transparent and open marketplace. Together with a number of our partners, we recently sent an open letter to GDS [Government Digital Service], firstly to applaud the success of G-Cloud to date, and to offer our recommendations for positive changes that can be made for future iterations,” Dawson concluded