The G-Cloud Opportunity
There is a demand coming directly from the citizenry of Asian countries for easy, clear access to the workings of their governments
The UK announced its own “cloud first” policy in October 2011 but has taken heat from critics for being slow to act. Denise McDonagh, director of the Cabinet Office’s G-Cloud program, responded by
pointing out that a million pounds’ worth of cloud-computing purchases have been made through the British government’s CloudStore since last February, and that 75 percent of the spending went to
small businesses.
“As I have always said, this is only the beginning of the journey,” she wrote in a blog post. “Our approach to propagation will help and guide us all on our way, but we’d appreciate it if people
weren’t trying to trip us up just as we’re getting into our stride.”
Clouds gather in Asia
G-cloud opportunities abound in Asia. Although no government is immune to belt tightening these days, one of the primary drivers across the continent, according to Forrester’s Jennifer Belissent,
isn’t strictly budgetary: there is a demand coming directly from the citizens of Asian countries for easy, clear access to the workings of their governments.
“Citizens are also pressuring governments to become more proactive and Internet savvy and to provide services in a more organized and citizen-friendly manner,” Belissent says. “This creates the
need for a more robust technology platform for governments to manage citizen-centric requirements and to provide efficient services. We expect citizen-centric drivers to become more prominent for
cloud adoption from governments over the next five years. As a result, there is a significant opportunity for vendors to help governments as they embark on what will likely be multi-year cloud
initiatives. Vendors that can align themselves with a government’s cloud objectives will gain much more from this shift than those that fail to do so.”
As with most cloud projects, be they in the public or private sector, integration is a top concern for G-cloud decision makers, and Asia is no different. Belissent points to India as a prime
example of this kind of integration anxiety.
“For example, there are limited cloud initiatives in India primarily due to the security and privacy concerns of losing control of critical data,” she says. “Data governance, reliability and
intellectual-property protection concerns coupled with data sovereignty issues complicate the move to cloud. Efforts to ensure that citizen, government and business data remain within national
boundaries have started to become ... patriotic and political issues for governments [and] will continue to inhibit cloud adoption.”
Although G-cloud presents opportunity for CSPs, they in turn must take the lead in helping governments realize the promise of their own policies in order to make them a reality. Intellectually,
government leaders know the cloud is the lean, mean future of federal service delivery. But as with most issues related to government, the chasm between rhetoric and reality is mighty hard to
bridge. The task ahead for cloud service providers is far from an easy one, but for those willing to roll up their sleeves and roll around in the trenches of government bureaucracy for a while,
the payoff is a hefty helping of that nearly $300 billion pie.
And of course there’s the whole “helping democracy work” thing. That’s pretty cool too.
