Experts in Birmingham have become the first in the country to develop cloud services accredited to sell to the public sector in the UK.
Tyseley-based SCC has developed a multi-tenanted cloud service – which means multiple public sector organisations can share the system eradicating the need for individual servers. This is the first of its kind that could be used by the public sector.
The firm, which is the technology solutions brand of IT group SCH, owned by Sir Peter Rigby, had invested in a £25 million data centre in a bid to deliver cloud services, known as a SMTC, ahead of its rivals.
It is already in talks with three public sector bodies about using the technology, which is in demand by the Government under the G-Cloud framework.
Tracy Westall, SCC’s UK public sector director, told the Birmingham Post the demand for the G-Cloud is not in doubt, but accreditation had been holding firms back – and now SCC has stolen a march on its rivals.
She said: “It is good news on a variety of levels – particularly the fact that the innovation has all been done in Birmingham.
“There are lots of exciting things going on in the region and this shows the technical abilities here as we have done something that nobody else in the country has been able to achieve.
“Nobody has ever come up with a multi-tenanted, secure environment like this before. The bit that is new is government can now have an environment which multiple government organisations can use.”
Traditionally dominated by large system integrators, the public sector outsource market is set to be revitalised in response to government plans that challenge the way IT has been delivered. The accreditation means the Government is satisfied the cloud system meets impact level three, which is considered the appropriate level of security for it to be used by the public sector.
The development follows years of work to create a pay-per-use, leveraged infrastructure which can be accessed by different organisations.
The firm will now be targeting central and local government departments and the NHS among others, in a bid to turn the technology into a multi-million-pound boost.
Ms Westall added: “The real advantage to the Government is it offers the opportunity to take advantage of services they could not take advantage of before.
"Cloud technology and the concept of pay-as-you-use is something that has traditionally been difficult for government to access because of the security restrictions.”
She said the firm had been in talks with the Government over the development for the past three years.
Home Office IT director Denise McDonagh, the programme director for G-Cloud, said: “Increased use of technology, and the cloud in particular, provide a fantastic opportunity for public sector organisations to be more efficient and the G-Cloud programme is about establishing a flexible, cost-effective framework which is also secure and meets the needs of the public sector.’’
