The UK Government G-Cloud is an initiative targeted at easing procurement of commodity information technology services that use cloud computing by public sector bodies in the United Kingdom.
[5] With the adoption of "cloud first" policy in UK in May 2013 [6] the sales have continued to grow, reportedly hitting over £50M in February 2014.
Public Sector organisations can call off the services listed on the Digital Marketplace without needing to go through a full tender process.
[20] One comment in the IT press noted that G-Cloud "has not quite delivered" on the government's hopes for its adoption, perhaps because "over time, the framework has evolved into a very different beast to the one it was when it first launched".
[2] The blog entry also stated that the tendering process has been improved, with the use of the Government Procurement Service.
[29] Suppliers define the service that they are offering as part of the framework agreement, and those details will be made available in the Digital Marketplace.
These details include such things as Business Impact Level[30] (e.g. IL2) that the service is accredited for, and how users will be on-boarded and off-boarded.
However, assuming funds are available, procurement from the Digital Marketplace does not require a full tender or mini-competition.