G-Cloud dream 'dying' due to 'broken' Digital Marketplace, says Memset founder

"Hideousness of old boys' network" still leads buying decisions, says Kate Craig-Wood

The G-Cloud dream is "dying" and the Digital Marketplace is "broken", cloud hosting firm Memset founder Kate Craig-Wood has declared, as the government technology service procurement tool enters its eighth iteration.

In a blog entry, Craig-Wood complained that her firm has struggled to make a return on its G-Cloud-related investment, has seen disappointing levels of business coming from the G-Cloud and attacks the scheme's failure to "change behaviour" in buyers.

Craig-Wood said Memset made an initial data centre investment of £2m and subsequent investment of close to £1m a year on security and compliance, as well as PSN (Public Services Network)-protected connections, which she said "has only just started working and nobody seems to actually use", all for an "utterly pitiful return" from working with G-Cloud of around £100,000 a year.

"We do have a fair bit of other government business now, but not via G-Cloud and still only six per cent of our revenue overall. Nowhere near enough to make it a profitable venture," said Craig-Wood.

She said Memset has "had no new business from G-Cloud since 2013", which makes her question whether becoming involved in next week's launch of G-Cloud 8 "is worth it at all".

While Craig-Wood admitted Memset's sales approach may be at fault, she argued that there should be no need to hire "traditional" salespeople anyway, as the "self-service with minimal interaction" nature of G-Cloud should be enough to make products and services discoverable on their own.

Craig-Wood believes the "biggest factor in the failure of the G-Cloud dream" is that the platform has not changed customer buying behaviour, and has not broken away from "the hideousness of old boys' networks and closed procurement systems" it was specifically built to replace.

"The Digital Marketplace is also broken. Most buyers only go there once they have already worked out what they want to buy and from whom - perhaps in part because it is so hard to actually find what you're looking for," she said.

"I'm tired of chasing a vision that nobody else seems to be committed to."

According to government figures, G-Cloud sales reached £1.141bn at the end of March 2016, with 62 per cent of volume sales awarded to SMEs.