Some 22 resellers in CRN's Top 250 VARs have generated £1m business through G-Cloud. Here we catch up with four of them to find out how they've succeeded in cracking the cloudy framework where many suppliers have failed
4. MCSA
G-Cloud sales: £12m (including CSA)
Overall G-Cloud ranking: 51st (including CSA)
Number of deals: 23
Biggest deal: £4.2m (Nottingham University Hospital: G-Cloud 5)
Representative: Paul Timms, managing director (pictured)
What's been your recipe for success?
Having a very narrow focus. There are over 2,000 suppliers on G-Cloud and if you multiply that by the number of products on there, it's quite a big beast. So we've really just focused on some key partners around the NHS space - so things like patient record data and single sign on. We just work with the customers in the NHS that want to buy those solutions, and enabling them through G-Cloud.
Has G-Cloud achieved its original aims?
For me that's quite difficult to say as I just see a very small part of what G-Cloud achieves. But it has certainly focused us and others in the channel on the cloud and looking at different ways of delivering outcomes for customers through SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. It has certainly created innovation.
What is your top tip for budding G-Cloud suppliers?
Focus on something that is different and would help a particular area of public sector. If you put Office 365 into G-Cloud you'll get nearly 1,000 entries. Someone from a public sector body trying to search for an Office 365 partner is not going to trawl through 1,000 partners. Through your description you can be very specific and capture requirements quite succinctly.
What's the biggest lesson you have learned on your G-Cloud journey?
The issue with G-Cloud is you can't do any live updates to do it. So when you set off at the beginning of, say G-Cloud 9, you set out your product set and then you can't change it for the number of years it's live. As we all know cloud technology is changing monthly if not more quickly. So it's about trying to input things in there that are going to last for the duration and having that laser sharp-focus on what you think you can achieve for specific verticals.
What is your biggest G-Cloud bugbear?
The lack of live updates. Because you can't change prices or descriptions, or add new products, it can become obsolete quite quickly.
How can G-Cloud be improved?
They do pretty well at listening and they do want to learn. But maybe they could run a session one month on IaaS for the NHS and invite along anyone with those sorts of products to talk to people from the NHS about that. The next month it could be people from universities to talk about SaaS for student record data. That education piece would help public sector buyers understand what all these terms emanating around cloud are.
How concerned are you that more G-Cloud spending is shifting towards the big consultancies like Capgemini and Deloitte?
Maybe a little. But if you're talking about some of these very big projects in the NHS, HMRC or national government, they are enormous. Trying to do an enormous Office 365 roll out for central government is not something an SME can take on as it's too big a risk. That's why you have Sis like Capgemini and Atos there - they will sign up to the risk and penalties, and will then sub-contract out a lot of stuff to SMEs. SMEs like us can work on things up to £1m but if HMRC wants to go with someone with massive clout who they can beat with a stick if they fail - we wouldn't be able to sign up on those terms.
