|
|
|
News that the government means to set up its own cloud – the G-cloud – suggests scope for delivering applications such as office-type services, document and content management, payroll, human resources management, and enterprise resource planning.
Most public sector organisations could share these services via the cloud instead of developing and supporting each application separately. Some might see the move as almost logical or even inevitable.
Government-run datacentres could be reduced from 500 to just 12. If managed properly, this could easily save the UK exchequer £3.2 billion per annum – as recently quoted by the Cabinet Office. Virtualisation alone could cut the equipment requirement 90 per cent – potentially affecting the scale of nuclear power plans.
If suppliers host their software on the G-cloud, the government will gain from economies of scale and increased efficiencies in a more competitive market.
More small and medium-sized software suppliers could access the public sector market by hosting services in the G-cloud.
Who would run this immense project?
The government will reportedly spend about £16.5 billion on IT this financial year, equivalent to 1.4 per cent of GDP. Most of this money will be wasted, as most projects are expected to fail.
As the NHS fiasco shows, government cannot deliver this project. You can almost guarantee a catastrophe. And a failure of this magnitude would make the current level of UK debt look positively manageable.
The logical move would give the project to organisations that have built similar-sized computer resource pools, such as Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. Safeguards, such as fixed-price contracts rather than the "do whatever it takes " disgraces of the past, would be needed to stop such organisations bleeding us all dry, though.
Trialling a project that has one of these giants serving a smaller government department would prove the concept. Is there a party out there that would champion such potential IT savings?
Take-up of G-cloud services in the public sector will have to begin with a few back-office applications from a few departments, and evolve into a comprehensive set of applications available nationally. This is not only a sensible approach for the government but any business moving to a hosted or Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
Keith Bates is chairman at the Cloud Computing Centre
Related articles
In this video find out about the fast-growing Chinese vendor's plans for market domination and how the channel is its route of choice
Find out what gifts Acer has in store for partners for 2012 in this exclusive roundup of its recent conference
CRN's premier networking event is back on 17 May at the Ricoh Arena
Date: Thu 17 May 2012
Channel fighters preparing to square up once more on 24 May
Date: Thu 24 May 2012
The proliferation of endpoint devices within the enterprise has highlighted the shortcomings of one of the traditional approaches to data security
This Forrester report compares the costs and benefits of legacy email and productivity software with Google Apps
Dave discovers that rozzers are seemingly living in the technology dark ages
Mark Needham, founder of distributor Widget, argues that John Browett leaves for Apple with Dixons in better shape than when he arrived
|
|
|
Do you agree?
G Cloud
When will the G Cloud be developed / moved forward? There was a lot of talk in '09...
Posted by Chris Hill | 19 Mar 2010
Have your say