G-Cloud enjoys bumper February

Sales through CloudStore rose from £7.4m to £11.1m last month

G-Cloud has enjoyed its most bumper month to date as £3.7m of sales were conducted through the CloudStore catalogue in February.

Launched last February, G-Cloud is designed to shake up traditional government buying patterns by enabling public sector bodies to procure off-the-peg cloud services from a wide range of suppliers, both big and small.

The project got off to a slow start, with G-Cloud executive Eleanor Stewart last October admitting that breaking down age-old alliances between government procurement bods and the large SIs was proving a thankless task.

But sales now appear to be cantering along nicely, with the total logged in CloudStore rising sharply from £7.4m to £11.1m last month.

Almost 130 deals were completed in February, ranging from a tiny £5 transaction between Fubra and the Department for Communities to a £146,000 deal between i2N and the Ministry of Justice.

G-Cloud also forms part of the government's cost-cutting agenda and its goal is to save the taxpayer £20m in the current fiscal year ending 31 March, rising to £40m next year and £120m in 2014-15.

Earlier this month, government bigwigs went one step further by announcing that central government departments will soon be mandated to use public cloud services wherever possible.

The deadline for the submission of tenders for the third iteration of G-Cloud, Giii, was 6 March, with the framework set to go live by mid-April.