Government response to PASC report

Kate Craig-Wood, Managing Director, Memset

Cloud computing presents end users with the opportunity to do more with less, however there is still work to be done in driving trust in cloud based services. We fully support CIF’s messaging, which is to assist business users in identifying and investing in secure, reliable services, and our company values go hand-in-hand with this aim. CIF educates the end user on how to identify the most suitable and cost-effective services for them and we in turn endeavour to provide our customers with low-cost, high-quality services.

Martin O’Donnell, Managed Hosting Services & Cloud Services Director, ICM

The rapid adoption of cloud computing has seen cloud-based services become a central part of business strategy, with its ability to deliver flexibility and drive down cost being two of the main benefits for end users. This partnership further reflects our commitment to the cloud and more importantly our cloud-based customers.

Bryan Jones, Executive Director, Public and Large Enterprise, Dell EMEA

We recognise CIF’s Code of Practice as an important part of industry self-regulation and are delighted to work with CIF to encourage and achieve best practice.

Alex Hilton,

Managing Director

The cloud industry forum aims to bring together like minded organisations determined to deliver common standards in security, privacy and interoperability that our end users can have faith in.

Cloud computing is the future of computing and is rapidly becoming fully mainstream. The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) and its code of practice will help ensure that the highest standards are maintained. As well as ensuring CIF members are appropriately skilled and regularly assessed, businesses will appreciate the peace of mind as well as a clearly defined industry standard with which they can assess their suppliers, and undertake Cloud implementations with the highest confidence and trust. Outsourcery fully endorses the principles of CIF and is proud to be a founding member.

Like with any traditional technology, customers expect the cloud to demonstrate transparency, capability and accountability, and we are confident that our robust and specialised solutions offer the stability needed to encourage businesses to work closely with cloud service providers to become more efficient.

Phil Wainewright - President - Eurocloud

The CIF Code helps further EuroCloud's strategy to develop an industry-wide framework for customer confidence in the quality and integrity of cloud delivered services.

It is essential that all major stakeholders in the cloud industry ecosystem participate in the cloud industry forum to build trust in the industry as a whole.

As technologies like cloud develop at pace it is vital that pioneers come together and share their knowledge for the future of the industry. The Cloud Industry Forum plays a crucial role in ensuring that the technologies of tomorrow are maintained and developed to the highest standards. The hosting platforms that businesses place their trust in must keep the security of their customers at the top of the agenda and the CIF will encourage this best practice.

Phil Haylor - Compliance Manager - Rackspace

We firmly believe that the cloud industry forum will provide assurance for end users in a rapidly developing market, providing advice and guidance to consumers and service providers alike.

The traditional model of delivering software and it services has gone beyond the on-premise model. Our industry has changed as has the market. As we move towards a new business model end users need the confidence that only an authoritative code of practice can bring.

We fully support CIF’s goal, which is to assist business users in identifying and investing in secure and robust Cloud services. We have been focused on delivering innovative new technology to provide secure search for the cloud, so we are aware of the importance of best practice in this sector. We understand the value of Cloud Industry Forum’s messaging and we are delighted to be joining them in championing their Code of Practice.

The cloud is high on the agenda for many CIOs and channel partners. Today Microsoft is witnessing a rapid adoption of Cloud Services, and over the next few years significant implementation is anticipated within the UK. Providing leadership for customers and partners in the development of agreed standards and sharing of best practices in this new era of technology is an important and valuable role in supporting the transition to the cloud

Facilitating consistent management across compute resources in the data center and in private, public or hybrid clouds is critical to the industry's success. The Cloud Industry Forum will help build trust with customers looking for secure, stable, and effective cloud computing solutions so that they can monitor and manage service delivery with confidence. The Cloud Industry Forum's Code of Practice initiative is a fundamental step to encourage transparency and best practices in cloud computing.

Greg McCulloch, UK Managing Director, Interxion

We very much look forward to working with CIF and helping them to succeed in delivering a credible and certifiable code of practice for the cloud industry as well as bringing business, consumers and suppliers of cloud services closer together in a trusted and sustainable marketplace.

Home \ News \ Government response to PASC report

Government response to PASC report fails to address IT procurement and lacks commitment and insight into the Cloud

This despite the overwhelming response to the launch of G Cloud initiative

The Cloud Industry Forum has given a lukewarm response to the follow up report on the Government’s response to the Public Administration Select Committee’s (PASC) report into IT procurement in Government, released today Thursday 26th February, 2012.

Andy Burton, Chair of CIF and CEO of Fasthosts, commented: “The Government appears to have been generally constructive and proactive in its response, but the Report clearly highlights a lack of original thinking and is vague on its intended course of action. It has attempted to address what it calls the challenge and “scale of behavioural and process change required across government” to achieve its own aims of becoming an “intelligent” customer, and yet there is not one reference to game-changing technological innovation such as Cloud provisioning.”

“The government and indeed the committee has unfortunately failed to give due attention to how purchasing IT on a modern, flexible, pay-as-you-use basis is revolutionising how organisations access and consume IT. Instead, it has focused attention on the large incumbent suppliers, heaping blame on them for past public sector failure,” he added.

“This comes as all the more surprising given the recent news from the Government Procurement Service which received more than 400 responses to the tender notice for G Cloud services. So the question we really should be asking right now is why is there such as disconnect at the heart of government,” he continued.

Only this week at Cloud Expo Europe Liam Maxwell, Cabinet Office’s director of ICT futures stated: “In two or three years' time what we now call IT, the delivery of those disaggregated services like hosting, networking, end user devices, support, all of those, will become core commodity services" and will be bought "like stationery".

PASC had made a number of other recommendations for change – where cloud based services could be instrumental in delivering and yet according to CIF, there was no response from Government itself. These include:

Opening access for SME suppliers to public sector contracts
Overcoming the challenge of government buying commodity items as a single customer without shutting out smaller suppliers to provide flexible end user solutions
The urgent need to replace many legacy systems with IT that supports integration across departments and government agencies
Scalability in IT development and delivery in smaller scale, iterative ways that keep pace with technological advancements
Supporting application developers to deliver programmes to market swiftly and cost-effectively for members of the public and civil servants alike.
Using SaaS as a way to empower users to ‘vote with their feet’ as a tool to push innovation.

Concluding, Andy Burton said: “The public sector is under enormous pressure to reduce costs but increase productivity and agility in adapting to changes. Cloud computing fundamentally enables and supports integrated cross-government procurement of ICT platforms while the pay-as-you-use approach allows for a far more flexible, innovative and competitive market for applications to meet public sector needs.”

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