G-Cloud sales total £1.58bn with central government still the biggest user

Encouraging signs for SMEs in latest figures

Total sales made through the government's G-Cloud framework amounted to £1.58bn in October, an increase of £190m over July's figures.

The cumulative figure for the amount spent on G-Cloud since its inception in 2012 until October 2016 was £1,577,528,146. Of this, 55 per cent of the total by value and 64 per cent by volume was with SMEs. This breaks down as £875m in sales to SMEs and £702m with larger enterprises.

The gap between spending on SMEs and large enterprises widened as a result of a relatively strong showing in October for SMEs, with sales totaling £27.5m, versus £10.6m to large enterprises.

Central government continues to use G-Cloud more than other areas of the public sector. The percentage of sales made through central government on G-Cloud is now 74 per cent, compared to 26 per cent in the wider public sector.

This means that to date £1.2bn of G-Cloud sales have gone through central government, with the rest split between the wider public sector at £274m, local government spending at £84.9m, not-for-profits at £12.8m and ‘other' listed at £2.31m.

The growth of G-Cloud sales over time is shown on the graph below. It shows the government has been largely successful in its efforts to make it easier for SMEs to sell to government and for the public sector to take advantage of the benefits of cloud services.

However, the fact so much of the spend has been made through central government, which has a mandatory cloud-first policy, skews the figures somewhat.

Furthermore, sales in local government, at just shy of £85m, will be the cause of most frustration to those working G-Cloud uptake, given how much potential spend on cloud services local authorities and other council services could generate.