back to article Gov CloudStore opens for business

The Cabinet Office has anointed 257 IT and comms suppliers of all shapes and sizes to sell their wares to public sector punters via the CloudStore – an online catalogue of services. This is the first tranche of government's £60m G-Cloud framework, providing some 1,700 'pay as you go' ICT services through an e-marketplace which …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The bar to acceptance doesn't seem to have been high

    The acceptance criterion appears to be, 'Can you fill in this application form?'.

    Also, the catalogue needs deduping

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The bar to acceptance doesn't seem to have been high

      And - there's no tagging or categorisation apart from the four very high level categroies mentioned in the article.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re: The bar to acceptance doesn't seem to have been high

        Tried to leave these comments as feedback on the site, but no matter what you write, the comments field gives an error, 'The Comments must be at least 6 characters long.'

        'This is the Government CloudStore which we've developed in just four weeks.'

        And tested?

        <snark>Wow - an online data store with 600 records, in just four weeks</snark>

        1. Disgruntled of TW
          Meh

          Re: Re: Re: The bar to acceptance doesn't seem to have been high

          Yeah - comments on website were broken. Minimum 6 chars, maximum was around 70, although it would let you type more but refuse to submit. Poor, poor quality for 4 weeks of effort.

          Not a hint of any services to help buyers decide what is appropriate and safe to outsource into the cloud. I guess the assumption is such skills (migration from legacy to cloud) already exist in solid, reliable pockets of individuals within government. Feels to me like a big chunk of missing DNA in the G-Cloud genome.

          Something is better than nothing, to break the stranglehold of the large corporates.

  2. Stuart James
    Holmes

    Resellers and existing relationships

    It would appear to me that many of whom have responded are simply reselling other services, not many actually have their own, hopefully the smaller suppliers who actually have their own products will benefit from this "appstore" and the existing relationships won't win the bid on something the resellers are actually not offering as part of their response. Many resellers don't even have a service description.

    The search seems limited to certain fields within the suppliers portfolio , so this may actually benefit the SME's where the larger resellers have just put in things like "Consultancy" and "Services".

  3. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    It'll be interesting to see what the takeup will be of the smaller suppliers

    Say in about 1 years time.

    My intuition says lots of "customers" will stick with BAU relationships with the people they know/have heard of/bought them a big lunch last week.

    SME's thinking they just have to sit back and wait for the orders to come in will be *sadly* disappointed.

    This gives you "credibility" with potential customers. You have to make them aware of who you are and what you do, preferably who you've previously done it with who they might recognize.

    Need a backup system. Who you going to call?

    Computacenter? SCC? Cognitive Network Solutions?

    And remember most "Name Brands" will sub-contract some of the work anyway. You really *are* paying Harrods prices for Asda services.

    But it's a *start* to (maybe) opening up the market so (cautious) thumbs up.

  4. Janko Hrasko
    Linux

    So much for committment to Open Source

    Search for 'open source' on their G-Cloud blog:

    http://gcloud.civilservice.gov.uk/?s=open+source&submit=Go

    It comes back with ONLY ONE page, called COPYRIGHT.

    Nice one!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So much for committment to Open Source

      That, and (according to built with) the catalogue runs on IIS

  5. Cliff

    (2^8)-1

    nice.

  6. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    I am surprised more at myself than the coalition.

    A Tory inspired gov that has not yet demonstrated a profound hatred of all the or'nary Joes out there and working class in the main (yes, I know "we are all workers now" but some depend upon benefits, low income supplements, discounted discount stores, low cost rented accommodation, low cost autos, ... more than others in the new working class).

    Plus - there really seems to be a need to foster SMEs at a very basic level?

    And the UK really seems to need to shed its wage slave mentality even if just to restore human values over and above person as a purchaser, service user, consumer?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IL4+ Cloud...?

    IL4+ in the public cloud?

    Verily thou art having a larf.

    Good luck finding an HMG Accreditor to sign that off.

    (I tried watching LA CONFIDENTIAL on my TV but it was only rated for RESTRICTED. I guess that rules out SECRET Army ;)

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