The new mandate will require all central Government departments to purchase IT through the G-Cloud Framework

London – May 9th 2013 – Skyscape Cloud Services Limited, the easy to adopt, easy to use and easy to leave Assured Cloud Services Company, has commented on the recently announced ‘Public Cloud First’ mandate, which has been confirmed by the Public Expenditure Cabinet Committee. The policy, which has come into force with immediate effect, will require all central Government departments to purchase IT directly from the G-Cloud Framework, and is part of the Government’s commitment to position cloud services as the primary channel through which public sector organisations procure IT. 

The announcement of the Government’s ‘Public Cloud First’ mandate on Saturday 4th May also coincided with news of the new Government CloudStore and the launch of G-Cloud iii – the third stage of the highly successful one year old Framework – which is now live, offering more than 700 suppliers and over 5,000 services to the UK public sector. 

“The announcement of the long-awaited ‘Public Cloud First’ mandate, together with the equally significant launches of the all new CloudStore and Giii, are excellent news for the UK public sector,” said Phil Dawson, CEO of Skyscape. “By putting the ‘Cloud First’, the Government is 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. The G-Cloud Programme has quite simply started a revolution in the way that the UK public sector deploys 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.”   

Since the launch of G-Cloud, UK public sector organisations have experienced vast cost savings, often between 70-90% over traditional delivery methods, through the cloud. Dawson added: “It is clear from the recent announcements that the Government cloud market is quickly maturing, which can only be good news for the UK public sector, the tax payer and British citizens, who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of agile, low cost ICT, which will quickly deliver the required services.” 

When discussing Giii, CloudStore and the ‘Public Cloud First’ mandate, Denise McDonagh, head of IT at the Home Office and G-Cloud programme director, described these launches as, “an important milestone.” She continued, “Over the past few months, I’ve talked a lot about my hopes for a Public Cloud First policy. I believe this is an essential tool to encourage government towards more commodity IT buying and to help change mind-sets, which for too long have been stuck in “big is beautiful” mode.”

Skyscape recently announced that its Pan Government Accredited (PGA) assured cloud services are available on the Giii G-Cloud Framework. Skyscape provides a range of IL0-IL3 assured cloud computing services dedicated to the UK public sector, delivered with leading technologies from Alliance Partners: QinetiQ, VMware, Cisco, EMC and Ark Continuity. Skyscape’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service solutions have helped to transform the provision of IT solutions into a lean, elastic, assured green utility by providing a genuine on-demand cloud computing service.

Skyscape Cloud Services is currently working on over 100 projects across central government, local authorities, police, healthcare and other publicly funded bodies.