The CloudStore will be the catalogue of services and suppliers on the G-Cloud Framework and we’ve been working on designing it for the past couple of weeks. The aim is to make it into a type of “e-marketplace” which contains details of the services, accreditation levels and enable buyers to make comparisons between services to facilitate intelligent and efficient purchasing for buyers and suppliers.
The prototype we’re developing for this has followed much of the methodology we employed to devise the OJEU such as classifying products by Lot:
- Software as a Service
- Platform as a Service
- Infrastructure as a Service
- Specialist Cloud Service
with a view to making it straightforward to navigate alongside working with some of the user journey experts in GDS. We’re currently testing that what we’ve done makes sense and works and then we’ll be opening the store up for everyone to see, use and feedback on but before we can do that we need to get on with working through and assuring the 1700 services for the catalogue .
If you missed out on the last round and want to submit your own company’s cloud-based services to be on the Government CloudStore, then fear not. We are planning to re-open the framework for new suppliers and products in the next couple of months….so watch this space.
Glad to hear the CloudStore is coming. Can you clarify whether the Cloud Store and the Apps Store are different terms for the same thing or different things? Sort of relatedly, I assume the CloudStore is aimed primarily at IT purchasers if I can put it like that, i.e. decision-makers buying for a whole organisation or a largish group within an organisation – is this correct? I assume one day we may have something (an Apps Store?) aimed at the more individual or small team level, but presumably the first step is essentially a store for IT budget holders who will generally be in the IT department (which I think is what they have in the US).
Hi Paul,
Yes indeed the CloudStore is the Government Application Store (Apps Store) and although it will be the ‘IT purchasers’ or ‘budget holders’ that are the ones who will inevitably be in charge of processing business cases for procurements through the store, due to the transparent nature of the CloudStore, there is nothing stopping everyone else from accessing the CloudStore and assessing the services on there against their particular requirements. In fact we are hoping that the CloudStore will provide a great deal of information to those ‘on the ground’ about what service offerings are out there and in turn provide guidance when creating business cases to procure services from the CloudStore.
The CloudStore is going to be accessible publicly and there is no reason why everyone can’t benefit from it in one way or another.
Hope this helps.
Tom
G-Cloud Team
Many thanks, Tom, for your reply which seems a very sensible approach. I suppose I was thinking: is the CloudStore a wholesale store or a retail store? Your answer seems to be: we are happy to serve any customer! And that seems right at the moment. One day that may change and perhaps the store will have as it were some shopping spaces that are more wholesale oriented and some that aim at the retail customer. But all of that is probably in a few years time :-)
I’m just curious about what dynamic you expect the CloudStore to introduce into purchasing of these services, particularly if (as I believe is planned?) you allow the users of services to rate and leave comments on them after they have used them.
For example, poorly performing services which get rated at less than 50% you would expect to get ignored by future purchasers, so there would be some levelling up effect on quality.
On the other hand, if I was looking to buy a service and had a choice of two options, one which had a rating of, say 65% and was solid and satisfactory, or a second service which looked innovative but had no ratings… wouldn’t I be tempted to play it safe and just use what everyone else is using? Could I justify the risk now that the CloudStore has crystallised some risks which perhaps were hidden before?
So as well as a levelling up, there might also be some levelling down and stifling of innovation too?
I’m not aware of any good research into the effect of these kind of marketplace dynamics, but I’m sure it would be a great topic for a post at some point in the future :)
Hi Richard,
We are learning as we go along in terms of managing marketplace dynamics, which is why we plan on giving users the ability to feedback on the site itself and the functionality it offers. Our first aim is to provide a transparent marketplace, with the desire to improve and develop it overtime.
In terms of service feedback, the first iteration of the CloudStore will not have this functionality as we believe the state of our user authentication does not fully support it. We do however, understand the risks surrounding customer feedback and take this very seriously.
It is our intention to provide suppliers with the ability to view and respond to any feedback received in order to establish the CloudStore as a forum by which suppliers and customers can work together to improve both the services offered and the value gained.
I hope this clears things up.
Tom
G-Cloud Team
see blog here too http://gcloud.civilservice.gov.uk/2012/02/23/evaluating-services/