The UK government plans to establish a G-Cloud as part of its Digital Britain strategy. Cloud logic is all about creating a shared service platform that agency customers choose to use - because it is easier, better and cheaper than the alternatives. Fresh thinking will be required to achieve this result while avoiding the well-known downsides of large-scale centralised IT projects in government.
A G-Cloud appears on the UK government's ICT strategy radar
One of the recommendations of the UK government's Digital Britain report, released last week by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is for the creation of a 'G-Cloud' - a government cloud computing service.
The case for a G-Cloud was advocated in the April edition of Ovum's Straight Talk Monthly. We also discussed this in more detail in the report Will Cloud Computing enable or undermine public sector IT climate change?, published in May.
The Digital Britain report proposed a G-Cloud as a secure shared computing platform for use by multiple central and local government agencies as one of its ICT efficiency and procurement initiatives.
Cloud computing offers a new path through the centralisation minefield
The logic of cloud computing is certainly attractive. The core notion is the ability to treat ICT as a ubiquitous, on-demand service and to consume as much, or as little, as is needed. Cloud Computing is thus a combination of two extremes - the centralised supply of a generic, configurable service and the decentralised choices of individual customers.
Virtualisation and automation (for elasticity), broadband networks (for ubiquitous availability) and self-provisioning processes (for ease of adoption) make cloud computing more customer centric than any previous generation of ICT services. Cloud Computing offers a new path through the infrastructure centralisation minefield by enabling the creation of an easier way for agencies to choose to behave cooperatively.
An example is the US Department of Defense Information Systems Agency's Rapid Access Computing Environment. Enthusiasm for the cloud is rising in the US, with the new government CIO being a vocal proponent of cloud computing as a new catalyst for modernising the government's ICT infrastructure and services.
However, a G-Cloud - or indeed any private cloud - operates within a complex environment of legacy infrastructure and applications, and a constrained set of supply and demand forces. Infrastructure cannot be modernised overnight and neither can the behaviour of agencies be changed quickly to embrace cloud logic.
A G-Cloud must not be treated as mandated, centralised IT
Implementing a G-Cloud will require a mix of strategic and opportunistic supply and demand-side initiatives. These include, for example: building all new data centres in the cloud computing mode; using G-Cloud as a delivery platform for selected new applications; and encouraging existing shared services and agency ICT functions to source new computing capacity from the G-Cloud and also to retail cloud applications - with added value such as security vetting, authentication and billing.
Measures will also need to be put in place to educate agencies about where, when and how to use both the G-Cloud and public clouds safely and cost effectively - with careful attention to security and privacy risks.
The Cloud is the product of a new model for ICT, so we need fresh thinking about how to harness the value of cloud computing and how to create incentives for agencies to collaborate in making the G-Cloud a reality.
If implementation of a G-Cloud is viewed simply as an opportunity to mandate agencies to use renovated centralised ICT infrastructure then it is certain to end in tears.
Steve Hodgkinson – www.ovum.com
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