Budget likely to increase demand for cloud services

Budget will lead to increased take up of cloud services

With Chancellor George Osborne’s announcement that there will be an increase in savings expected from each government department, commentators are arguing that the IT industry will begin to see significant traction in the move towards cloud services.

The savings expected from each government department has increased from 20 per cent over a four-year period under Gordon Brown’s government to 25 per cent over the same period under the coalition, according to today's emergency Budget. More specific details on how departments will meet these savings will be released in the annual spending review on 20 October.

This puts more pressure on the public sector to provide the same services or similar for even less money, and arguably these savings can best be achieved by adopting cloud services.

Sarah Burnett, senior analyst at Ovum, said: “Cloud computing is set for a boost following today’s emergency budget. In fact, the Budget could well turn out to be among the best things to happen to cloud computing in the UK public sector. It is likely to bring it to the top of the list of how to cut IT budgets."

In a similar vein, Dave Baldwin, managing director of ICT specialist Getronics, said: “With huge budget cuts across the board, public sector organisations need to utilise cloud-based services to cut costs and deliver efficiencies. By switching to a hosted desktop environment, department heads can make these savings through leaner and more flexible services, instead of relying on rigid and costly on-site IT.”

Finally, in a recent interview with Computing, KPMG’s Global IT Advisory partner Bryan Cruickshank said: "Advances in technology have made a variety of low-cost options available. New sourcing strategies such as the cloud give CIOs a wider range of options in terms of technologies that enable low-cost services."

in recent weeks senior CIOs across government have indictated their belief that the G-Cloud will be the most transformative of all government IT initiatives.