Will Google be one of the first G-Cloud winners?
January 17, 2012
Grazed from Business Cloud 9. Author: Katy Ring.
Following the publication of the Strategic Implementation Plan for the Government ICT Strategy back in October, we were told that Cloud delivery will be increasingly important – g.g. by December 2015, the goal is for 50% of central government new ICT spending will be transitioned to public Cloud computing services.
This is an aggressive target, requiring a big culture shift within Government. To assist, the Government is establishing a G-Cloud Authority to act as a government-wide entity for commodity commissioning and direction of procurement as a “Cloud First” initiative is launched. And, as in the US, which pioneered this approach, the low hanging fruit with which to start populating the App Store is tactical and will probably be email…
The Foundation Delivery Partner for email in the Government Cloud Strategy is Warwickshire County Council and Tonino Ciuffini, Head of information Assets at the Council shared his experiences at the Public Sector Enterprise ICT conference, held in London towards the end of last year.
The Council was looking to replace Lotus Notes, but felt it would be inefficient to implement yet another version of Microsoft Exchange in its stead. Ciuffini says that they were looking to share a system using the buying power of government size and/or to use Cloud-delivered email. Aware of the G-Cloud initiative, the Council explored whether it could use private sector commercially-available Cloud facilities.
With this in mind, Ciuffini worked with partners to evaluate six Cloud email offerings, half of which were delivered using private Cloud delivery, and half public Cloud delivery. Ciuffini said that public Cloud offerings had obvious advantages: they were half the price of private Cloud offerings; they were already available (whereas private Cloud solutions are still being built) and could be tested immediately. All three public Cloud offerings he evaluated could deliver IL2 secure emails, but whilst Google had the lowest cost and easiest commercial model to understand, both IBM and Microsoft lost out by virtue of their more complicated hybrid pricing model. The contract went to Google.
As a result of the move to public Cloud delivery with Google, Warwickshire now has access to low cost or free storage and can make use of video conferencing. The solution is being rolled out to 4,500 users and the partner working with Warwickshire on the migration is a small IT supplier.
Ciuffini says the new email system gives staff the ability to work while they are out and about and access email from any PC. It has also increased the range of devices they can use to access IL2 email. Warwickshire has found Google docs a bit gimmicky but also genuinely helpful in the capability it provides to link networks to share documents between police and different authorities.
There is a data protection policy in place which creates some restrictions on usage, but as Ciuffini puts it, anything that Warwickshire would have to disclose publicly can go into Google, while social care and payroll records are obviously not put there. And the Council is currently investigating with Google and CESG whether IL3 accreditation might be a possibility in the future. Ultimately Google is able to provide a more secure environment than Warwickshire can and without downtime and painful upgrades.
Ciuffini’s verdict was that the move to Google Mail for IL2 communication had already reduced costs and improved service by delivering a modern and flexible system for staff to use. And remember Warwickshire is the G-Cloud Foundation Delivery Partner for email. So, as the first application services to be made available from the App Store are to be unveiled in March, the prospects are looking good for Google.