UK is most advanced cloud environment in the world, says Westminster CIO

Wilde lauds progress of the UK in cloud services

The UK has one of the most advanced cloud environments in the world, according to Westminster City CIO David Wilde.

Wilde, who has worked as CIO for Westminster since 2008, said that it is surprising but the UK has become a leader in this field.

“Over the last three years the UK government has embraced the cloud, this combined with a challenging cloud debate fostered by the press and the conference circuit has meant that the private sector has responded with solutions to the challenges faced by end users.

"For example, in the US there is a lot of talk about the cloud, but it hasn't been picked up by the media in the same way, and so there hasn't been the same pressure on suppliers to respond to concerns.”

Wilde cites Asia Pacific as one area that looks to the UK for guidance on how to migrate services to the cloud.

“Asia Pacific has not seen the same economic contraction that we have faced, this is another reason for the UK IT market being as advanced as it is."

Currently, Westminster Council outsources 60 per cent of its IT infrastructure and Wilde said he expects the entire infrastructure to be outsourced by 2013.

The council currently has a hybrid cloud infrastructure, with services situated in the cloud including desktop services hosted and managed by Capgemini. Westminster's event management arm is hosted in the public cloud by Salesforce.com’s CRM solution. Some 85 per cent of its cloud services are hosted in private clouds, with 15 per cent hosted in a public cloud.

Separately, the council has embarked on a shared services arrangement with Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea councils. The councils will release details of a contract for a shared NGN managed service in four weeks. This will be a framework contract that outsources the management of voice, video and other network data. Other London boroughs will also be invited to sign up to the shared framework.

The group is also part-way through procuring a shared social care system and will release details of this in the spring.