Archivo de la categoría: Public Sector

G-Cloud, iland, Interviews, Public Sector

G-Cloud – why being certified matters

Cloud computingIt might surprise you to know that more than £900m worth of sales have now taken place via the G-Cloud platform since its launch. The Government initiated the G-Cloud program in 2012 to deliver computing based capability (from fundamental resources such as storage and processing to full-fledged applications) using cloud and it has been hugely successful, providing benefits to both customers and suppliers alike.

The G-Cloud framework is offered via the Digital Marketplace and is provided by The Crown Commercial Service (CCS), an organisation working to save money for the public sector and the taxpayer. The CCS acts on behalf of the Crown to drive savings for the taxpayer and improve the quality of commercial and procurement activity. The CCS’ procurement services can be used by central government departments and organisations across the public sector, including local government, health, education, not-for-profit and devolved administrations.

G-Cloud approves framework agreements with a number of service providers and lists those services on a publicly accessible portal known as the Digital Marketplace. This way, public sector organisations can approach the services listed on the Digital Marketplace without needing to go through a full tender process.

G-Cloud has substantial benefits for both providers and customers looking to buy services. For vendors the benefit is clear – to be awarded as an official supplier for G-Cloud demonstrates that the company has met the standards laid out in the G-Cloud framework and it is compliant with these standards. Furthermore, it also opens up an exciting new opportunities to supply the public sector in the UK with the chance to reduce their costs. Likewise it brings recognition to the brand and further emphasises their position as a reputable provider of digital services.

Where public sector organisations are concerned, G-Cloud gives quick and easy access to a roster of approved and certified suppliers that have been rigorously assessed, cutting down on the time to research and find such vendors in the marketplace. This provides companies with a head start in finding the cloud services that will best address their business and technical needs.

I am proud to say that iland was awarded a place on the G-Cloud framework agreement for supplying Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) at the end of last year. We deliver flexible, cost-effective and secure Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions from data centres in London and Manchester, including Enterprise Cloud Services with Advanced Security and Compliance, Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service and Cloud Backup.

So if you are looking to source a cloud provider, I would recommend that you start your search with those that have been awarded a place on the G-Cloud framework agreement. It is important to then work with prospective providers to ensure their platform, service level agreements, native management tools and support teams can deliver the solutions that best address your business goals as well as your security and compliance requirements. Ask questions up front. Ensure the provider gives you full transparency into your cloud environment. Get a demonstration. You will then be well on your way to capitalizing on the promises of cloud.

Written by Monica Brink, EMEA Marketing Director, iland

FedRAMP, Government, News & Analysis, Policy and Regulation, Public Sector, US

US FedRAMP has turned into a slow lane for government cloud says protest group

Fedramp logoA cloud industry protest group has called on the US government to fix its FedRAMP process for certifying government cloud service providers. The inefficiencies of the system are neutralising any benefits the cloud can bring to the US taxpayer, it claims.

A collective of disgruntled agents, that ranges from top tier cloud operators such as AWS, IBM and HPE to support agencies and corporate lawyers, has appealed for a review of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, a certification process that has been dubbed FedRAMP.

Though FedRAMP was designed to simplify the use of cloud services by government agencies, the system has been described by a cloud industry advocate group as ‘fundamentally broken’. An aggrieved group of cloud players calling itself FedRAMP Fast Forward claims that a simple system, for helping US civil servants to select between FedRAMP-certified providers, has become too complicated and unwieldy. The pressure group has proposed a six point plan to address the system’s lack of clarity, high costs and lack of accountability.

The promised ‘certify once, use many times’ framework has not been delivered, claims the pressure group. Instead, the system has become expensive and time-consuming to use. As a result, the planned government savings from using cloud services are unlikely to materialise, says the group.

One of the reported problems is that the system does not provide the level of monitoring and management that cloud service providers would expect from any service. Potential suppliers to a government tender cannot gauge their status in the approval process or get feedback on the how to improve things or move the process to its next stage, according to a group statement. Agencies have also complained that they can’t see where the listed authorised cloud services might operate.

The Cloud Computing Caucus, a cross party group of US Congress Members, claims that the certification process is now nearly three times as lengthy as it first was. Worse, it can be 20 times more expensive. The group’s latest annual report says certification time has gone from nine months to two years, on average, while the typical cost expanded from $250,000 to up to $5 million.

The pressure group has now posted a six point reform plan calling for a single route to authorisation, more transparency over the approval process, harmonised security standards, cheaper monitoring, the option to upgrade without dropping out and a simpler road map for compliance.

FedRAMP Fast Forward members include AWS, HPE, IBM, CGI, General Dynamics and CenturyLink.

BT, Cloud Services, Europe, News & Analysis, Public Sector

BT wins £24 million worth of EU cloud service contracts

BT Sevenoaks workstyle buildingTelco BT has won new two cloud service contracts with European Commission worth £24 million, which brings its total of EC contract wins to four in 12 months.

The brief, to provide public and private cloud services across 52 major European institutions, agencies and bodies, is one of the largest government contracts in Europe. Among the clients receiving the cloud computing services are the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Defence Agency.

The two framework contracts, announced this week, were awarded in December 2015, and will run for a maximum of four years once legal details have been finalised. Once work begins BT will implement the contracted private cloud services, after which it will become one of five providers competing to run public cloud projects.

The two new deals are the third and fourth European Commission framework contract wins awarded to BT in 2015, all of which involved open calls for tender from all EC approved suppliers.

In August 2015 BT signed a seven year £11.5 million (€15.2m) framework contract with the European Commission to provide voice services across 21 major European institutions, agencies and bodies. This followed March’s award of a five year £42 million (€55.7m) framework contract for the delivery of dedicated internet access to all major European institutions, agencies and bodies across the 28 member states. BT has provided services to the European Union for more than a decade.

The newly contracted services will be hosted from a geographically diverse spread of data centres within the European Union and all customer data will remain within the Union. As part of the tender process BT had to prove it could meet strict EU requirements for data sovereignty, compliance, security and privacy.

BT will integrate and manage the data centre estate using its Compute Management System (CMS), a single, federated portal for IT services which, BT claims, is its ‘secret sauce’ for winning contracts.

“This is a milestone in our journey to be the leading global cloud services integrator,” said Corrado Sciolla, BT Global Services’ president.

G-Cloud, Government, Public Sector, UK

New players ally to G-Cloud 7 amid accusations of anti-cloud behaviour

Cloud computingA number of new service providers have announced their participation in the latest iteration of the UK’s government computing services framework, G-Cloud 7. Among the new suppliers pledging to meet the conditions of the latest framework were Fordway, Acuity, Company 85, RedCentric and Komodo Digital.

However, critics have argued that The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has introduced uncloud-like behaviour, as newly introduced limits could hinder buyers from expanding their use of cloud services.

Under the new rules in G-Cloud 7, users will be forced to re-tender via G-Cloud if they intend to buy additional capacity or services that will cost more than 20% of their original contract’s value. This, according to industry body EuroCloud UK, goes against the defining principle of cloud computing, scalability.

“It deters buyers from using the G-Cloud framework, because it actively discourages the pay per use principle,” said Neil Bacon, MD of Global Introductions and a member of EuroCloud’s G-Cloud working group. Worse still, he said, it will prevent buyers from getting the economies of scale that are the original motivation for their buying decision.

Several G-Cloud providers, including EduServ and Skyscape, outlined their concerns about the move in writing to the Cabinet Office. However, Surrey-based service provider Fordway has committed to the new system, launching its Cloud Intermediation Service (CIS) on G-Cloud 7.

The new service helps clients assess, plan, transform and migrate their infrastructure partly or completely to public cloud. It promises agile project management, bundling together the resources that clients will need to support their in-house team at each stage of the transition.

Fordway claims its relationships with public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google allow it to create a pivotal single point of contact to manage a transition irrespective of the target platforms.

In Fordway’s case, clients may not be subject to unexpected fluctuations in capacity demand, according to MD Richard Blanford.

“Most IT teams will only migrate their systems to cloud once, and it’s a big step. For the sake of their organisation and their own careers it needs to be planned and delivered successfully, on time and within budget, without any surprises,” said Blanford.

Asia, Interviews, Public Sector, public sector cloud

Cloud computing in the public sector

BCN has partnered with the Cloud Asia Forum event to speak to some of its speakers. In this interview we speak to Ben Dornier, Director of Corporate & Community Services, City of Palmerston.

BCN: What does your role involve and how is technology helping your organisation grow and reach more customers? What is the role of Cloud Computing in this?

Ben Dornier: My role includes responsibility for general corporate affairs (finance, city tax revenue, legal affairs, HR, IT, contracts, insurance and risk) as well as governance and strategy (the city strategy, annual budget, annual financial reporting, performance reporting, policy and corporate strategy), and community services (libraries, city recreational facilities, city facilities, city community services).

ICT plays a major role in ensuring this portfolio can not only be adequately delivered, but especially in ensuring it is done efficiently and sustainably. Cloud computing is a major player, with several major systems already in the cloud, and our transfer of all corporate ICT systems into public/private cloud hybrids over the course of this financial year. It has reduced our risk and cost base, and allowed us a shift of emphasis from employing pure technical expertise to technical strategy expertise, allowing us to focus on our core services while improving service standards.

What do you consider as the three main challenges for wide Cloud Computing adoption in Asia and how do you anticipate they can be overcome?

Interesting question, and really I can only answer regarding the public sector – the first is primarily HK based. I note a reticence amongst public agencies to provide mobility solutions to their employees, and I think this seriously hampers the effectiveness of cloud based solutions to get government workers out of their desks and into the city infrastructure and services, which I believe likely drags on costs and efficiency. With this as a barrier, many of the benefits of cloud based solutions will not be readily as apparent to the government – and the skill sets of highly competent, highly mobile workforce will not be an advantage.

Second, I see the structural issues associated with data governance and related policy as a serious barrier, although this is steadily decreasing. As long as policy makers are not actively addressing cloud procurement and adoption issues, the ICT staff supporting internal decision making will not be able to recommend new and innovative models of service delivery without there being fairly high costs associated with development. This continues the prevalence of ‘bespoke systems’ and the myth that ‘our agency and its requirements are unique, and we need a unique system’. I simply do not believe this is true any longer, and nations which address this at a federal or national level are reaping the benefits.

Third, in ‘cloud-readiness’, Asia is rapidly climbing – but this is really a private sector metric. I would strongly advocate that there be a concerted effort in the industry to support a public sector metric, which could bootstrap some of the incredible work happening in the private sector, and be a convincing argument for changes in public policy towards cloud use. Public sector use will be a serious revenue driver once procurement practices are able to support government cloud use in the least restrictive manner appropriate.

How much is Mobility part of your strategy? Is it important for organisations to enable employee mobility and reach out to customers through mobile devices?

Mobility is a ‘force-multiplier’ for us (to borrow from military terms), which allows us to increase productivity while reducing pressures on human resources. Municipal employees are able to spend less time at their desks entering data into corporate systems, be it for inspections and assessments of civic assets, to animal and parking infringements. For these staff, less time at the desk means more time doing the work they were hired to do. It also allows us to offer better employment flexibility for staff who would prefer to operate part time or odd hours, without some of the productivity issues often associated with workplace flexibility.

We are also finding that young employees are increasingly expecting us to provide this capability, and quickly adopt mobile solutions. As for our city residents, more than 50% are accessing city information through mobile devices when and where they need it, and an increasing proportion of these rely on mobile devices as their primary access. This will only increase.

How do you think Disruptive Technologies affect the way business is done in your industry?

Technology disruption is continuing to be a key component, particularly as older, expensive Line of Business systems are proving not nearly as capable as well managed cloud based solutions. I believe an increasing disruptor in this area will be cloud based integration services offering connections which tie multiple cloud based solutions into effectively a single service from the perspective of the end user.

There will always be a role for major system suppliers, but increasingly the aggregated cloud based service sector will take a large chunk of market share while reducing the risks associated to big capex spends and expensive implementations. When I am spending tax money, this is an important consideration!

Can you recommend a – relevant to Cloud and Technology – book/film/article that inspired you?

Being a bit more digital, might I suggest a blog! I have a heavy interest in concepts around ‘smart cities’, a technology disruption occurring around the business of building very expensive but often technologically ‘dumb’ civil infrastructure like bridges and waste facilities. I am an avid reader of posts at Jesse Berst’s “Smart Cities Now” blog, through his site at www.smartcitiescouncil.com. There are a few good blogs in this sector, but I enjoy the variety Jesse’s site provides.

What was your interest in attending Cloud Asia Forum? What are you looking to achieve by attending the event?

Frankly, I know from past experience that I am guaranteed an ‘ah-hah’ moment, or even several, which will change my thinking and perspective on a specific area related to cloud solutions in government. I am looking forward to hearing the speakers and interacting with delegates and finding out where these ‘ah-hah’ moments will occur. This year I am particularly interested in listening to topics covering C-Level persuasion, the translation of the technical advantages of cloud computing into corporate decision making involving non-technical (meaning ICT!) executives. For me, I think this will be helpful in persuading elected officials on their own terms about the benefits of cloud adoption.

asia cloud forum logo

Carrenza, gov.uk, Government, IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis, Public Sector

Carrenza claims it’s now top cloud host for UK government digital service

gov.ukUK cloud service provider Carrenza has announced it is now providing the majority of hosting for the government digital service (GDS) as it made the production and staging environments for the Gov.UK site live on its cloud infrastructure.

Gov.uk has now rationalised hundreds of individual web sites for government departments and public bodies and concentrated the traffic for 24 ministerial departments and 28 other organisations according to Carrenza.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider Carrenza was initially asked to provide the infrastructure for Gov.UK’s preview operation in 2013 but, it claims, once it opened a second UK data centre its role was expanded. Carrenza rents capacity in Slough and London from data centre operators Equinix and Level 3.

Carrenza runs its IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings on a VMware-based cloud built on HP servers and HP 3PAR SAN storage which, it says, supports a range of operating systems, application and database technologies that includes “pretty much anything that runs on X86 architecture”. After Carrenza achieved official security accreditation the GDS moved the majority of Gov.Uk’s staging and production systems to the Carrenza Cloud, which has now received 2 billion visits, it says.

GDS originally found Carrenza through the G-Cloud III framework and a competitive tendering process. A major consideration for any cloud service provider, when pitching for contracts with the GDS, is a commitment to open source technology, according to Carrenza CEO Dan Sutherland.

Carrenza was chosen for Gov.UK because its custom software was developed in-house at GDS which needed to source cloud hosting and support for its flagship website.

“The launch of Gov.uk was a significant milestone,” said Sutherland. Open source has underpinned open dialogue and is helping to change and improve the way government communicates with its citizens, according to Sutherland.

Any cloud service provider wanting to win government contracts needs to concentrate on communicating with them, according to Andrew Mellish, Carrenza’s Head of Public Sector Services. “Our team understands what GDS is trying to achieve and how best to deliver the technologies they are using,” said Mellish, “when someone from GDS calls one of our engineers, they know they are speaking to someone who gets it and will work with them as efficiently as possible.”

News & Analysis, procurement, Public Sector, Research, Sungard

Hidden cost of public sector cloud over £300m a year, says research

The UK’s public sector is spending an extra £300 million a year on maintaining cloud services and on hidden costs associated with their cloud computing projects, according to Sungard Availability Services.

The claim follows an independent study, commissioned by Sungard, that questioned 45 senior IT decision makers in the UK in public sector organisations with more than 500 employees. The average individual cloud spend of the study group, in 2014/15, was £390,000.

Sungard’s analysis of the research appears in a report, Digital by Design: Avoiding the Cloud Hangover in the UK Public Sector, which claims that unexpected costs and increasing complexity will create a ‘cloud hangover’.

The main revelation of the research is that 82 per cent UK public sector organisations (according to the study group of 45 decision makers) have encountered some form of unplanned cloud spend. The average yearly cost of maintaining cloud services (among the study group) was £139,000. A further £258,000 was spent by each, over the last five years, on unforeseen costs. External maintenance costs for hardware accounted for 41 per cent of these unexpected costs, while systems integration was the other major contributor to bill shock, accounting for 30 per cent of the unbudgeted expenditure.

According to the report, 42 per cent of UK public sector organisations use the cloud to lower the work load for their ‘IT team’, while 47 per cent expect the cloud to reduce IT costs. Some 43 per cent of the public sector’s cloud customers are allegedly struggling with the costs of personnel needed to manage cloud deployments.

Roughly half (53 per cent) of all UK public sector organisations said cost savings were the key driver for adopting cloud services, but 33 per cent believe this has not been achieved. Over half (55 per cent) of all UK public sector organisations (claims the report) complain that the cloud has increased the complexity of their IT environment and 71 per cent say that cloud computing added a new set of IT challenges. Achieving interoperability between existing IT and new cloud platforms was the most frequently mentioned challenge, cited by 44 per cent of the survey group.

“There is no silver bullet for adopting cloud computing,” said Keith Tilley, executive VP of Global Sales and Customer Services Management at Sungard Availability Services, who called for a case by case review.

News & Analysis, Oracle, procurement, Public Sector, uk government

Ministry of Justice has made no savings at all from cloud strategy claims report

The UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has saved nothing from its cloud strategy as the department still buys 2.3 million licenses, reports The Register. According to the report, a government insider said Oracle is “extreme in its defence of existing licensing” and “stopping any flexibility.”

A freedom of information (FOI) request forced the MoJ to reveal that it buys 53 separate Oracle products including 961,000 internet expense licences, 250,000 licenses for each of three human resources systems and 100,000 payroll licences.

With 3,000 staff at the MoJ’s headquarters, that would average around 767 licenses for each employee. If all staff employed by the MoJ’s partner agencies were considered, then 33 Oracle licences have been bought for each of a total of 70,000 staff.

The MoJ transferred its people, services and IT to the Cabinet Office-run shared services centre in November last year. The FOI response revealed there had been no licensing cost savings yet to be associated with the move, since the licences are held in perpetuity and do not expire. The Technology Oracle Support and Maintenance Shared Services Oracle Support contracts will expire in April 2016, which could save £100m over the lifetime of the shared services centre contract.

The MoJ has refused to disclose the total it is spending on Oracle software, claiming this is a matter of commercial confidentiality.

The MoJ needs to review its use of Oracle, said analyst Clive Longbottom, senior researcher at Quocrica. “If the ministry being held to ransom by Oracle, through the systems integrators and consultants that the government insists on using, then it’s time to insist on a replacement database,” said Longbottom.

The analyst argued that Microsoft or IBM would be ‘more than willing’ to help the MoJ to move them over to their systems. A more nuanced data storage platform using a non-relational database alongside Hadoop could save them a lot on Oracle licences. “Oracle fights to the death to look after its licence revenues,” said Longbottom. “It is still in a legal battle with Rimini Street over how the third party support vendor manages Oracle licensing.”

Andy Tait, EMC, News & Analysis, Public Sector, VMware

Cost, flexibility driving UK public sector to cloud

The UK public sector is warming to cloud

The UK public sector is warming to cloud

A recent survey of over 600 UK decision makers suggests over three quarters (85 per cent) of UK public sector employees are using some form of public cloud services.

The VMware-sponsored research sheds some light on adoption drivers, with cost savings looking like the most frequently cited. More than a third of respondents (34 per cent) said affordability was the main reason for choosing to buy cloud services in their department, followed by ease of use (23 per cent).

“The findings from this research are very positive for the public sector. Line of businesses are using public cloud services to drive efficiencies across the organisation – both for employees to access data inside the organisation, and to speed the delivery of citizen-focused services, for example passport applications, that fluctuate at times throughout the year,” said Andy Tait, head of public sector strategy, VMware.

While cloud services aren’t always cheaper than their legacy alternatives it is perhaps unsurprising that affordability is one of the leading drivers of cloud uptake in the public sector given increased budgetary pressure and savings requirements being placed on departments.

Still, the research highlights a growing IT security issue. The survey results show just under two-thirds of (60 per cent) of public sector respondents use some form of public cloud services, whether offered by IT or not.

“In order for the UK public sector to drive efficiencies in a secure, flexible, agile and compliant manner, business users need to look at embracing a hybrid cloud strategy that can provide portability of workloads, one set of management tools and deliver services such as disaster recovery and built in security – without the cost of having to investing in unnecessary resources and tools,” Tait said.

Alastair Mitchell, Dods Research, Enterprise IT, Huddle, News & Analysis, Public Sector

Only one third of UK public sector comfortable with cloud – survey

Survey research reveals UK public sector workers still aren't sold on cloud

Survey research reveals UK public sector workers still aren’t sold on cloud

Only 35 per cent of public sector staff are comfortable using cloud-based services according to a survey report published this week.

The survey, commissioned by enterprise collaboration cloud service provider Huddle and carried out by Dods Research, petitioned more than 5,000 UK public sector workers on their views towards cloud services and collaboration.

According to the results just a third of public sector staff seem comfortable using cloud services, while slightly more say they have never used cloud services before.

The results come at a time when the UK government is looking to cut billions of pounds by cutting programmes and improving operational efficiency through the use of cloud services, a key pillar in its ‘cloud-first’ strategy originally revealed in 2013.

“The public sector frontline is stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Alastair Mitchell, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Huddle.

“On the one hand, staff are being asked to remove £13bn of spend, but on the other, the new cloud-based IT infrastructures that are key to a large proportion of these savings are not yet sufficiently understood or trusted enough to be widely deployed. UK government has to up the rhetoric on cloud benefits and training, else the cuts are simply not possible,” he said.

“It’s really very simple. If public sector employees — and in particular those in IT roles — are not convinced of the benefits of cloud computing and the changes to working practices that can be delivered through it, then the £13bn public sector savings are not realistic.”

The UK government spent over £4.3bn on IT services last year, though the government has frequently said cloud services must play a leading role in reducing IT spending across the UK public sector.