G-Cloud 11 goes live with 4,200 suppliers

Thousands of small businesses have won the chance to bid to supply cloud computing services to government bodies through a major government procurement framework.

G-Cloud 11 has now been awarded and will go live on the Government’s Digital Marketplace soon. So far, 4,200 suppliers have been awarded places on the agreement with over 90 per cent of them small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). More than 31,000 services will be available for customers to access, subject to a process of additional assurance.

Since 2012, more than £4.79 billion of cloud and digital services have been procured by public bodies through G-Cloud, with almost 45 per cent of that spend going directly to SMEs.

The agreement gives central government, local councils, NHS trusts and other public sector bodies a way to purchase cloud-based services such as web hosting from a single, central website.

Niall Quinn, director of Crown Commercial Service’s Technology Pillar, said: "G-Cloud continues to be a major success story for how we drive innovation in the public sector. G-Cloud is all about simplicity, making it as straightforward as possible for customers and suppliers to find each other."

G-Cloud is accessed through the Digital Marketplace, created in 2014 by Crown Commercial Service and Government Digital Service to make government procurement easier and more transparent.