27th July 2016
Billy McInnes, of online publication Microscope, has taken a look at the problems that some organisations have had in engaging with G-Cloud and spoken to those both who have benefited and those that have not. In this well balanced article it is clear thatthere is no simple answer. What does become clear, however, is that those organisations that claim to have benefited from it are hardly small. Of those interviewed that sing its praises, one is a large corporation with a turnover of over £116 million and an even bigger American parent, one has a turnover of over £32 million, there are very few true smaller companies that are benefiting.
The UK Government defines an SME as a company with fewer than 250 employees and states that this accounts for over 99% of all businesses registered in the UK. This is how they claim it is successful for SMEs and is a large part of the problem. Interesting too, that two of the companies that have benefited most from previous G-Cloud iterations are both organisations that fit in the 1% of UK businesses that the Government’s own definition would describe as large.
The problems with G-Cloud continue to rumble on. Services from the latest iteration, G-Cloud 8, aredue to become available very soon. Will it be better? Will it enable more of the smaller companies to do business with the Public Sector as was originally stated? Only time will tell. In the meantime, read the full article in Microscopehere.