Cabinet Office questions G-Cloud SMB claims

Government insists more than half of all G-Cloud contracts have been awarded to SMBs to date rather than the 10 per cent figure claimed by a pressure group yesterday

The Cabinet Office has disputed figures released yesterday by The 10% Group over the amount of G-Cloud contracts awarded to SMBs.

According to a statement yesterday from The 10% Group – led by Memset founder Kate Craig-Wood – just 10 per cent of G-Cloud contracts to date have been awarded to SMBs.

But the Cabinet Office has pointed CRN to its latest figures claiming that 56.4 per cent of total G-Cloud sales by value, and 62.1 per cent by number have been awarded to SMBs.

According to the figures, 57.1 per cent of total sales by value were through central government and 42.9 per cent through the wider public sector.

And by number, 59 per cent were through central government and 41 per cent through the wider public sector.

In a statement sent to CRN a Cabinet Office representative said: “G-Cloud allows the public sector to buy the IT services they need when they need them, rather than forcing them to design complex solutions from scratch. There are now 832 suppliers and over 7,000 services on the frameworks, with cumulative spend now reaching £31.2m. We anticipate that our cloud-first policy will result in 50 per cent of new central government IT spend being procured through the CloudStore by 2015.

“SMEs are a key driver for the country’s economic growth, and G-Cloud is reducing red tape and making it simpler and cheaper for smaller companies to join the G-Cloud supplier framework and win business. Our latest G-Cloud sales information shows that this is working, with 56.4 per cent of total sales by value and 62.1 per cent by number having been awarded to SMEs," the statement added.