UK firm Huddle has teamed up with Whitehall security bosses to deliver a Cloud-based collaboration solution that can be used for work on classified government documents.
The deal with FCO Services, which built and manages the UK government’s secure private network, will enable civil servants across Whitehall to share policy documents and make changes online, work that currently has to be done either by face-to-face meetings or by a back and forth e-mail exchange thanks to the sensitive nature of some of the content. The organisations have teamed up to launch Huddle IL3, the first commercial public cloud service to be modified and accredited for pan-government collaboration on RESTRICTED data.
As the first Software as a Service (SaaS) application to be hosted on FCO Services’ Government Secure Application Environment (GSAE) Cloud infrastructure, Huddle IL3 allows public sector teams to access and distribute content up to IL3 (RESTRICTED) with the appropriate security measures and accreditation.
Alistair Mitchell, CEO at Huddle, explains:
Huddle already boasts a presence in 70% of UK government departments and this latest partnerships opens up much of the remaining 30% as well as providing a competitive lead over rivals such as Microsoft and Salesforce.com. FCO Services’ (GSAE) platform, created specifically for government and hosted by government, is intended to support Cloud-based working and help departments achieve the 25 per cent efficiency savings led by the Corporate Spending Review 2010.
Chris Moxey, CEO, FCO Services, comments:
