Rigby targets the public sector after SCC G-Cloud is green-lighted

IN a development that could deliver a whole range of public sector contracts, IT firm SCC has received government accreditation for its G-Cloud platform.

SCC is the technology solutions brand of Sir Peter Rigby’s Birmingham-based SCH – Europe’s largest independent IT group. It is the first UK provider to receive such accreditation and the move should significantly increase the amount of business the firm does with public sector bodies.

The pan government accreditation for its new Secure Multi-Tenanted Cloud Service (SMTC), the cornerstone of OptimiseCloud, will allow the firm to capitalise on strong initial interest from a range of public sector organisations. 

The platform allows multiple public sector organisations to share the system instead of using individual servers and thus offers the potential for huge cost savings.

The first customers have already signed up and are scheduled to go live over the coming months.

SMTC is part of a broader strategy built on the firm’s long-term investment in cloud technology. The company unveiled a £25m state of the art data centre facility in October 2010 and is focused upon delivering cost-effective cloud services for the public sector.

The move gels with government plans to save as much as £3.2bn from its annual £16bn IT budget through the G-Cloud strategy.

Its proposal is to replace the current network of department-hosted systems with a dozen dedicated government secure data centres, costing £250m each.

Tracy Westall, SCC’s UK public sector director, said: “We’re delighted. Our customers have been talking about G-Cloud for a long time, but their adoption of services was hampered by the lack of accredited solution.

“That situation has changed. We took a leading role from the beginning and it was important to us to remain focused on our vision and the goal of building a real G-Cloud service.”

Following accreditation – which essentially means the government is happy the cloud system has the appropriate level of security to be used by public sector bodies – SCC can now supply IL2 and IL3 cloud services. It is likely to target local government departments and the NHS, amongst others.

Home Office IT director Denise McDonagh – the G-Cloud programme director – said: “Increased use of technology, and the cloud in particular, provide a fantastic opportunity for public sector organisations to be more efficient.

“The G-cloud programme is about establishing a flexible, cost-effective framework which is also secure and meets the needs of the public sector so we’re delighted that SCC is the first UK provider to gain pan government accreditation.”