Andy Tait, deputy director, G-Cloud, Apps Store and Data Centre Consolidation in the Cabinet Office says:
“There are 90,000 servers across central government alone and they run at at less than 10% utilisation."
He makes a strong case for radical change in the way government manages IT.
Interviewed by publictechnology.net, Tait says that 85% of all applications in the public sector would be suitable for a public Cloud. By having thousands of data centres, each requiring power, cooling and resilience, "we are really doing this in the most inefficient way possible", said Tait.
G-Cloud, he adds, "absolutely is coming".
Central Government IT costs about £16bn a year. Many of the smaller and innovative software companies will agree with Tait that the potential savings are huge. But will the Cabinet Office, even with the support of government CIOs, be able to overcome interia and make the necessary changes?