IDC: G-Cloud is ahead of the curve in western Europe

Analyst claims the initiative has boosted trust in government clouds

The UK is leading other western European countries when it comes to government cloud schemes, according to IDC, which praised the G-Cloud framework.

G-Cloud's flagship initiative CloudStore increased the maturity of buyers and providers, IDC said, adding that the scheme puts the UK government "ahead of the curve" when compared with other countries in western Europe.

"One of the key factors that drove the level of trust of UK government CIOs toward cloud was the transparent, common approach to information assurance adopted by G-Cloud," IDC said.

Earlier this week, data analysis carried out by CRN found that since its launch in 2012, the lion's share of G-Cloud sales went through just 25 suppliers, and that two thirds of accredited G-Cloud suppliers had yet to make a penny on the framework.

IDC added that cloud computing is becoming commonplace in European governments now.

"Over the past five or six years, western European governments have realised the potential benefits of cloud computing," it said. "In the early days of cloud, government CIOs were split between the sceptics – who considered cloud as just another iteration of traditional infrastructure and application hosting, and the enthusiasts – who saw cloud as a quick and easy way to significantly cut capex.

"Government CIOs we have spoken with are now looking at cloud to improve their ability to give access to applications and data from remote locations and multiple devices, as well as enhance scalability and elasticity to deal with peak workloads and cope with fast-growing demand for computing capacity."