London – 19th February – Skyscape Cloud Services Limited, the easy to adopt, easy to use and easy to leave cloud services company today recognised the second anniversary of the UK government’s G-Cloud programme.  Launched to bring about a much needed change in the use and procurement of IT services in the UK public sector, the Framework has opened the market to SMEs, created greater transparency and has boosted competition in what was previously a restricted marketplace.

Phil Dawson, CEO of Skyscape Cloud Services – which has been on G-Cloud since the first iteration and has successfully capitalised on the opportunity the programme has afforded to SMEs, making it the largest provider of assured cloud services to the UK public sector – has made the following comments:

“G-Cloud’s second anniversary is a time to reflect on just how much has been achieved in what, in government terms, is a very short timeframe.  The numbers speak for themselves, with the most recent reported figures for G-Cloud revealing that 56 percent of sales by value (and 61 percent by volume) have been with SMEs.  In fact, SME representation on the G-Cloud Framework has grown by 68 percent through G-Cloud I to G-Cloud 4.  Furthermore, since May 2013, with the introduction of both the third G-Cloud iteration and the government’s Cloud First policy, G-Cloud spend has  quadrupled, with the most recently published figures showing a total spend of  £92.6m.  There has been a seven-fold increase in the range of services available to buyers since the first iteration of G-Cloud, whilst the overall supplier base has increased four times – and many of these suppliers have never before done business with the public sector.

“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. When the coalition came to power in 2010, approximately 6.5 percent of government procurement spend was going to SMEs.  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.  The fact is that public sector organisations and departments are now benefiting from high quality, secure and low cost services, which in some cases can be deployed in a matter of hours.

“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, 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.  This demonstrates how open the relationship between the government and providers has become and the commitment from both sides to work together to improve the marketplace for all.

“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.”