A report from VMware has revealed the adoption of G-Cloud is not progressing as expected with many senior public sector IT staff sceptical about the process.
VMware interviewed nearly 200 IT heavyweights about G-Cloud, the UK government’s cloud service which will attempt to reduce IT costs by £200m per year and have 50% of IT spending coming through public cloud services.
Yet there wasn’t universal agreement on whether these targets will be hit, with only 30% saying the £200m cost-saving was attainable and a whopping 63% saying the government would struggle to achieve their plan of half IT spending through the cloud.
Overall consensus was that people were split on G-Cloud, with 45% of respondents saying they were in some way positive about G-Cloud compared to 41% who were indifferent or negative.
The Cloud Store – an app store launched in February designed to make buying IT services more convenient for public sector companies to procure – has all of its services available as part of the G-Cloud framework.
Despite this Andy Tait, head of public sector strategy at VMware, described G-Cloud as “potentially a game-changer” and said of the findings: “Putting cloud computing at the forefront…is, I believe, the correct thing to do as the potential benefits this model can deliver are huge.
“UK public sector organisations should use the direction provided by the G-Cloud strategy to make major and rapid changes within their organisations and revolutionise not just the way they deliver IT, but the way in which they deliver services to the public,” he added.
Tait had previously worked as deputy director for the G-Cloud programme.
The report also reinforced the various financial difficulties cloud is facing, with four out of five interviewed stating that cost cutting was in some way impacting on front line services.
Earlier this week Andy Burton, chairman of the Cloud Industry Forum, stated that 53% of UK organisations have adopted cloud, up from 48% this time last year.
