G Cloud: Government adds SaaS to public sector IT
The government has embarked on the G Cloud project, part of a package of measures detailed in its Government ICT Strategy released on Wednesday. The platform could eventually host applications and services for Westminster departments, more than 400 councils and other public-sector bodies in the UK.
The first phase of design work on the G Cloud will be completed in February, and government chief information officer John Suffolk said the first public-sector organisations will begin hosting some of their systems on a test version of the G Cloud in 2010.
Suffolk told ZDNet UK's sister site, silicon.com, that the platform will need to be fully operational by 2013/14 to help realise the Treasury's Operational Efficiency Programme target of cutting £3.2bn from the public sector's annual £16bn IT spend.
For more on this story, see Inside the G-Cloud: Whitehall's grand cloud computing plan unveiled on silicon.com.