As we now know, if you’re a public sector ICT buyer you are now expected to look at the G-Cloud – the rapidly-expanding catalogue of useful, cost-effective ICT goods and services – as your first port of call for any new systems you are thinking of purchasing .

I’ve recently discussed  our work in G-Cloud with our exciting project with QinetiQ to build a great new reservoir management system for the Environment Agency . But, I’d like to discuss another side of this key topic – what specifically we are offering that public sector ICT buyer through the programme.

In June this year we are very proud to be able to announce we had been awarded G-Cloud iii supplier status in the ‘CloudStore’s’ Infrastructure and Software as a Service categories, as well in the Specialist Cloud. Specifically, we are now listed for our document capture, document management and case management solutions there, in partnership with secure cloud infrastructure specialist Skyscape.

This is in addition to other Cloud services we can offer public sector customers, such as Cloud-based content backup or our extensive range of consultancy, implementation and support services.

The core of our offering is our EMC Documentum-based enterprise content and document management platform, SynApps Documentum Document Management in the Cloud. As a leading EMC partner, we implement and add lots of value to this top tier business suite.

Another G-Cloud solution is our Intelligent Document Capture in the Cloud product. This helps public sector customers capture all their key paper-based documents using a wide variety of scanners and multi-function peripherals, index and store them in a secure cloud-based repository. That turns them into a resource which is then much more easily accessible, online, in a controlled, secure environment. That’s based not on Documentum, but another great EMC product, its Captiva line.

SynApps is also providing innovative case management solutions in the shape of our Case Management in the Cloud offering, based on EMC’s xCP case management technologies; that offers the basis for a range of specialist case-based applications, such as Investigative Case Management in the Cloud, a piece of technology that lets the Police efficiently register and view the status of a crime online, and which allows all case-related documentation can be stored securely.

‘Securely’ is a very important concept in public sector ICT, of course. Indeed, fear that Cloud is less than convincing in this regard has been holding too many organisations back in this area. The great news is that the government has worked out a way to dispel this concern. Earlier, I mentioned our link with Skyscape. What that means in practical terms is that all our G-Cloud solutions will be hosted in highly resilient UK data centres via our partner’s Cloud Service infrastructure, which is officially certified to support all levels of data from Impact Level 0 (IL0) to Impact Level 3 (IL3).

As Skyscape has no less a set of clients than the MoD and HMRC, I think we can take that as a sign of its expertise in safety and privacy in the Cloud.

I know that some sceptics say that the G-Cloud programme is all talk and no big projects yet, but that’s wrong; it’s moving a head at a tremendous pace.

And from where we sit, our work in the G-Cloud is going tremendously well – and that real savings and benefits to the public are starting to be realised as a result.

This is one to mark up as a real success for Britain, we believe; do you agree?