Government CloudStore open for business

The government has taken the wraps off CloudStore, the G-Cloud apps store that it announced earlier this month, and made 1,700 apps available to public bodies.

For the first time, organisations will have a choice of apps to be delivered on demand, a move that is expected to bring greater cost savings across the public sector.

Among the 257 companies whose software will be available on CloudStore are major cloud vendors such as Microsoft and Google, major IT suppliers such as HP and IBM, service providers such as BT, C&W and Virgin Media, specialist cloud operators like Virtustream, open source companies including Red Hat and some British providers such as Memset and Logica.

The speed of change will be much faster in G-Cloud and it will make it much easier to move individual applications into the cloud.

A full list of providers is available from the G-Cloud website.

Much of the impetus of CloudStore has been to provide British SMBs with the opportunity to compete for government tenders. CloudStore itself has been built by one SMB Solidsoft, who constructed the site in just four weeks. Naturally enough, CloudStore itself is hosted in the cloud the site has been built on Microsoft Azure.

Karl Deacon, European MD of one of the selected suppliers, Virtustream, said that the G-Cloud would throw open a host of opportunities.

"It will allow the non-mainstream companies to offer innovation as well as being able to deliver huge efficiencies to the public sector. For us, it means we will be able to participate in government computing, something we wouldn't have been able to do without the G-Cloud framework," Deacon said.

He said that public sector bodies would be able to benefit greatly.

"The speed of change will be much faster in G-Cloud and it will make it much easier to move individual applications into the cloud," he added.

Another company that has been selected as a G-Cloud provider is content management specialist Huddle who also emphasised the flexibility that G-Cloud would bring to government computing.

"The Framework enables organisations to make the move from costly on-premise legacy ICT systems to innovative cloud-based technologies much faster and creates real competition in the government cloud services marketplace. Securing government technology deals has long been an area dominated by integrators and technology goliaths and this Framework has now levelled the playing field," said Alastair Mitchell, CEO of Huddle.