Open source gets look in as UK government rolls out G-Cloud

Open source companies have managed to get on board the UK Government's G-Cloud supplier framework, which enables public sector bodies to access and buy services from a range of listed suppliers. The idea of the G-Cloud is to make it less complex for public sector organisations to purchase by allowing companies to sign up and be validated with the CloudStore.

With pre-validated suppliers, public sector ICT buyers can skip issuing OJEU tenders and have assurances that the companies they use have been accredited. The supplier list has doubled since the first G-Cloud framework and is now made up of 75 per cent small or medium-sized enterprises.

This expansion of the program now allows open source-focused companies such as Sirius to offer open source based services and support for identity management, big data and databases, enterprise search and enterprise infrastructure. Sirius Chief Executive Mark Taylor has in the past been critical of government open source policies which would see it promote the adoption of open source but leave in place a procurement system built to serve large consultancy companies. "This really is a first!" he said, "The myth 'you can't get support for Open Source' is dead and now it's time to lay to rest the ogre of procurement."

(djwm)