Business Cloud Summit: Cloud in the Public Sector

“People don’t need the state controlling everything,” explained Adam Afriyie, MP Shadow Minister for Science & Innovation, at today’s Business Cloud Summit in London. Defending the Conservatives’ vision of transferring certain citizen data into the Cloud, and some reports about security issues, Afriyie said: “There's going to be a lot of rhetoric, especially as we move closer to the General Election. You have to question why there is a headline in one area of policy. If you’re releasing people’s health data into the cloud, have to make doubly sure it’s secure.”

 

The shadow minister went on to outline Cloud Computing for the public sector, including the cost savings, the end of big IT projects like the NHS database, and the use of power people: “they have a say in what’s going on.”

 

He added: “We have to make sure people are more in control of their own data that they are now, something we couldn’t do 10 years ago.”

 

Inevitably, the subject turned to the G-Cloud, Afriyie acknowledged “the concept is good”, but that, “What’s fundamentally different is Labour is talking about a massive public sector project so departments can link together. We’re reluctant to spend about £100m for the government to create its own cloud.”

 

Sitting alongside Afriyie at the panel debate, Andrew Abboud, CIO, City University London, spoke about the implementation of Cloud services within an educational institution. “First of all, I feel like a fraud – I’m not interested in the Cloud or technology. I’m interested in the business benefits is can provide my organisation,” he said.

 

“We have been dabbling with SaaS for CRM, but it was a failure because we didn’t do the standard things to realise the benefits of the investment. You still need to manage your investments properly.”

 

Abboud explained the currently investment at CUL was in a Cloud-based email system: “In the United States, over 50% of universities have switched to Gmail and Windows Live Mail. We simply can’t complete with those organisations like Google or Microsoft – and nor should we.”

 

The College University London CIO went on to claim the Cloud as a generational issue “is a lazy argument. If people use of Hotmail or Gmail, then you’re using the cloud.” He added that students “are not saying they want to use cloud apps not on premise, they don’t care! They want the functionality and ease of access, and that’s what we need to give them.”

 

Glenn Peacey, Manager of eHampshire, Hampshire County Council, spoke of how the southern county was enabling Cloud solutions in the rural areas: “We have a project called Smarter Working Centres. We’re putting out 10 to 15 small offices into the rural areas, allowing an environment for small businesses access to desk space and broadband on a pay to use basis.”

 

Peacey emphasised the importance of small businesses on the Hampshire economy: “We’re seeing small businesses as being an important part of the mix. SaaS allows us to do this flexibly, which we couldn’t do 10 years ago.”

Touching on the importance of broadband within the UK’s rural areas in order to allow people to use Cloud computing, the panel turned to potential solutions. Should the government subsidise a rural broadband rollout?

 

Hampshire County Council’s Peacey said: “There is currently a block in the investment system, which means urban centres will get super fast broadband really soon, but the cost in rural is such it needs a longer payback model. It’s a political decision which is wouldn’t want to make.”

 

“There are two models,” said Afriyie. “We can take your taxes and give it to the companies to rollout. The other model is actually you relax the requirements.”

 

Glynis Morris is the Contact Centre Manager at Gloucester County Council, and was on the front line during the 2007 floods that hit the westcountry. All the council’s servers and telephony systems were based in the office basement, and were flooded. However, Morris explained: “We were lucky to have CRM system, which enabled me to locate to other offices with the system and be operational with new phone lines. We were able to meet the requirements of the operations at the time, which were very extreme time. We were half an inch or water levels of losing electricity to 300,000 people.”

 

Gloucester County Council’s next step according to Morries, is to scale up to cope with swine flu: “We’ll be able to work everything from home or other offices around the county. We can the run of the whole of the county.”