Partners praise newly launched G-Cloud 10 but call for stronger policing

G-Cloud 10 went live today with 3,500 suppliers

G-Cloud 10 went live today as planned, with 3,505 suppliers awarded a place on the framework.

The framework's 10-day standstill period came to an end on Friday, with suppliers telling CRN that all services are operational today - as scheduled by Crown Commercial Service (CCS).

G-Cloud 10 launches with 658 more suppliers than its predecessor.

The tenth iteration of the framework was expected to be delayed until 2019 by CCS, but a supplier backlash triggered a U-turn by the governing body just a few months later.

G-Cloud 10 is largely the same as the framework's ninth iteration, but suppliers have praised CCS for the speed at which it has taken the framework live.

"It was quite a last-minute U-turn to move the original plans for G10," according to Nicky Stewart, commercial director at hosting provider UKCloud.

"It is quite a lot of work for CCS and, given the timescales, I think it went remarkably smoothly."

CCS' decision to bring forward G-Cloud 10's launch was announced in March, with suppliers then given until 23 May to submit applications.

Existing suppliers were able to copy information from one G-Cloud iteration to the next for the first time - a feature which has been praised by suppliers.

"It made it a lot simpler and quicker, which was good," Chris Swani, public sector director at Bytes, said.

"It gives us an opportunity to add and remove services easily, so I think it's better that now we can just roll over the individual services that are needed. You can still put new services on as well, but it is just a lot simpler."

Pricing problems

Perhaps the main factor to disgruntle suppliers when G-Cloud 10 was initially delayed centred on pricing.

Once a G-Cloud iteration has launched, prices and services cannot be removed, added or modified until the next iteration, meaning G-Cloud 9 prices would have stayed active for longer than previously expected.

Chris Farthing, managing director at Advice Cloud, praised the CCS for amending its timetable, but called for the government body to shorten iterations further.

"The economic conditions mean that you may need to change your prices," he explained.

"If you're a cloud services provider you don't stand still and some of the new services that you're introducing need to be paid for.

"I think it's massively important and I would like to see the return of the six-month refresh, just because of the way the market is constantly changing."

One of the few changes to G-Cloud 10 is that cybersecurity services have been brought back under the G-Cloud umbrella, having previously been spun out into a separate framework which Farthing said saw mixed levels of success.

G-Cloud 10, like its predecessors, comprises three Lots, with cybersecurity being brought into Cloud Support (Lot 3).

Lot 1 is for cloud hosting and Lot 2 is for software.

Farthing added that one of the key improvements he hopes to see from CCS at some stage is for the body to publish more G-Cloud data.

"There is plenty to do," he said. "I'd like to see a bit more automated contracting, I'd like to see more opportunities upfront and I'd like to see the search terms being used [by buyers]," he said.

"I'd also like to see more detail published around what is being bought. At the moment you can see the company and the Lot, but you can't see what services are being bought so I think a breakdown of that would be really helpful."

Policing

Bill Mew, cloud strategist at UKCloud, said more needs to be done to make sure that the framework is policed properly - but admitted that CCS has a relatively small team to handle such a vast framework.

"The framework should be applauded because its absence would have been a major issue, but having the framework in place doesn't guarantee the behaviour of the buyers and the suppliers," he said.

"There is still work to be done to ensure that enough of the buyers don't do off-framework deals and that, as much as possible, we play by the framework and don't try to game it."

UKCloud's Stewart stressed that the majority of suppliers and buyers abide by the rules, but said the CCS needs to make sure that one bad incident doesn't jeopardise the whole framework.

"It can be abused by some buyers that don't follow process and use it as a convenient way to get what they want, but that is down to the policing," she said.

"CCS does try to police it but they are a small team. They have a lot to keep track of and we don't want G-Cloud to be discredited by a huge scam that makes the government lose its appetite for these frameworks, but I'm sure that won't happen."