FG and G-Cloud

This post was originally an announcement on fodengrealy.com - Changes in Foden Grealy explains why it is here. ---

We are properly chuffed to announce that Foden Grealy (Ltd) has been awarded a place on the Government's new G-Cloud Services Framework.  The framework has been set up to make it easy for UK public sector organisations to procure low-cost, flexible cloud computing services from a wide range of suppliers: see the announcements - CloudStore open for business .

We believe that the Government's approach to IT is very clearly changing for the better and G-Cloud is a good example of the positive stuff that is happening. Moving to cloud-based services is absolutely the right thing to be doing; but what is really encouraging is the way that it is being done. G-Cloud has a refreshingly open inclusive approach and, crucially, is working in an incremental, learn-by-doing, non-big-expensive-bang kind of way.

Great too is the change in attitude to small companies: there are hundreds on the G-Cloud framework including us (big smile). It's a huge breath of fresh air for us to be able to contract directly with Government (soulful violin starts up in the background) as it's not always been easy to maintain our independence, and work in the way that would like to, in a marketplace dominated by big firms.

We will be doing our usual helping-out-with-change-management stuff: for details - and an opportunity to listen to Bananarama and the Fun Boy Three from 1982 - take a look at the description of our service. Hurrah!

Panel discussion on SMEs in the public sector

I was on the telly last week (well, sort of) in a live panel discussion on the role of SMEs in public sector IT...

ITU Live - SMEs, Agile and the Public Sector in this Age of Austerity

It's an hour long and there is no singing but there's some useful natter covering what the Government is doing to embrace smaller companies; and what 'agile' is and what it might do for the public sector.