Taxman signs up for cloud storage over PSN

HM Revenue and Customs has inked a deal with Skyscape for cloud storage.

The deal, signed via the CloudStore - the online marketplace that allows public sector organisations to buy cloud services from suppliers on the G-Cloud framework – will see the taxman move from local storage to cloud storage. The shift will begin this autumn and is set to be complete by early spring 2013.

The 12-month contract costs in the region of £230,000, according to HMRC. "Although since the service is consumption based (price per GB) the total cost is dependent upon the speed at which we migrate our data to the new service," a spokesman for the department said.

The contract is the first for G-Cloud services to be deployed over the PSN, the public sector's network of networks.

The deal will help HMRC get doing with the government's End User Device Strategy, part of the overarching Government ICT Strategy released in 2011. "The move to the Skyscape solution means that we can provide HMRC staff with access to the information they need to do their job from a range of devices and locations. It opens up the possibility of exploiting new devices and solutions to improve productivity and reduce cost," the department's spokesman said.

Skyscape claimed another public sector scalp this week. On Monday, the GDS (Government Digital Service) announced it had picked Skyscape for a major infrastructure-as-a-service supplier. Under the deal, Skyscape will supply cloud hosting, destined to support gov.uk – the GDS' project to create a single portal for accessing government services and information.  

"Whilst the gov.uk contract is the largest we have let so far, it is one of an increasing number we are letting through G-Cloud, which is now our standard way of procuring infrastructure services," Mark O'Neill, head of innovation and delivery at GDS, said.