Windows Azure, Microsoft’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, has been awarded the Impact Level 2 (IL2) accreditation by the Cabinet Office.
IL2 accreditation permits holders to transmit and store protected information, such as that generated by a public sector body.
It is the middle of three impact levels used on the Cabinet Office’s G-Cloud framework, which runs from IL1 (unclassified) to IL3 (restricted), although the scale is used in other settings and extends to IL6 (top secret).
Microsoft claims Windows Azure’s IL2 accreditation is “a key milestone” in supporting the UK Government’s aim of moving 50 per cent of new ICT services to the cloud by 2015.
Nicola Hodson, general manager of public sector at Microsoft, said: “Following our recent Office 365 IL2 accreditation this is a further endorsement of Microsoft’s public cloud services.
“The Windows Azure platform also created more opportunities for Microsoft’s expanding SME Partner community. There are already 80 assured on the CloudStore.”
While Azure’s accreditation has indeed been welcomed by Microsoft partners Solidsoft and Dot Net Solutions, the Cabinet Office has come in for criticism in the past over the inclusion of large firms like Salesforce and Microsoft in the G-Cloud framework.
In August, managed services provider Attenda spoke out, claiming SMBs were being ignored in favour of tier one suppliers.
Surprise has also been expressed at comments made by Denise McDonagh, head of the G-Cloud initiative, at a recent Q&A session.
As well as saying the Cabinet Office was going to push for a cloud-first strategy, McDonagh also claimed G-Cloud had never been about bringing government contracts to SMBs, but was instead about “levelling the playing field” between them and their larger competitors.
