PROGRAMME OVERVIEW: G-CLOUD APPLICATIONS STORE FOR GOVERNMENT DATA CENTRE CONSOLIDATION

PROGRAMME OVERVIEW: G-CLOUD APPLICATIONS STORE FOR GOVERNMENT DATA CENTRE CONSOLIDATION

1. Introduction This document has been written for all those interested in the future approach for delivering ICT services to public sector organisations, including central government, local government, health, education and the third sector. It sets out the opportunity to reduce costs and to enhance flexibility of centralised ICT services covering both information services delivered to citizens and staff, and the underpinning technical and physical Data Centre infrastructure. Developments in ICT mean it is now possible for different teams, offices or even organisations to share a common infrastructure. What were previously independent systems for individual organisations can be procured and built to common standards and then shared to deliver increased flexibility and responsiveness to business needs while reducing costs. Essentially, it means moving from ICT that has been procured separately by organisations creating their own infrastructure, to a new model in which ICT is provided as a utility. This shift, known as cloud computing has been pioneered by large internet firms including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and likened to the changes in the electricity industry during the early part of the 20th century, when organisations moved from buying their own generators to procuring electricity as a utility. While the cloud model is sufficiently proven for there to be clear benefits to the public sector, it is still at a relatively early stage of maturity. Key challenges include information ownership and security, and ensuring reliable service. The G- Cloud strategy has been developed by a team comprised jointly of representatives of public sector organisations and the ICT industry. This paper describes the outcome of this work, and sets out how the public sector will realise the benefits of this new approach through three interrelated initiatives:- 1. The Government Cloud (G-Cloud) infrastructure will provide a secure and resilient shared environment through which public sector bodies can resource ICT service at greater speed and lower cost. 2. The Application Store for Government (ASG) will be a marketplace to review, compare and select online G-Cloud business applications on a pay by use basis. 3. The Data Centre Strategy will reduce the number of data centres used by central Government to host G-Cloud and other ICT services to between approximately 10 and 12, and targets a 80% reduction for the broader public sector. This will bring substantial savings in cost and energy consumption. Establishing the G-Cloud, ASG and implementing Data Centre Consolidation will involve change in the way that ICT is procured and supplied, which will in turn require new ways of working in both ICT suppliers and public sector organisations. DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 2

Table of Contents: The G-Cloud Programme...p4 What benefits will the Programme Deliver?...p9 Progress to Date...p10 Implementation Approach...p12 Next Steps...p13 Conclusion...p14 DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 3

2. The G-Cloud Programme The Public Sector Today The current approach to Public Sector ICT involves hundreds of individual organisations investing independently in their ICT, resulting in a high degree of duplication. Specific examples include: 130 data centres across central Government departments, and many hundreds more across the wider UK Public Sector; 90,000 data-centre based computer systems (servers) supporting central Government ICT services and an estimated 200,000 servers across the UK public sector. The average utilisation level is estimated to be less than 10%; Significantly in excess of 10,000 distinct applications in use, with each application having been independently procured with minimal reuse of existing assets. What can G-Cloud do? The G-Cloud Programme will deliver ready to use, value for money ICT services for use across the public sector. Behind the scenes, these services will be provided from a significantly reduced number of efficient public sector data centres. This approach will deliver the following benefits: The data centre estate transitions to the optimum number of high quality, resilient sustainable and efficient centres. G-Cloud Programme in context of Public Sector ICT strategy The G-Cloud programme forms part of the Public Sector ICT Strategy, and supports and is enabled by many of the elements within this strategy (see ICT Strategy wheel below). The aim of the Strategy as a whole is to revolutionise Public Sector ICT, enhancing business flexibility and reducing costs and carbon emissions. The G-Cloud programme benefits from some of the work done in the other strands, and in turn enables the other strands. For example:- * The delivery capability for G-Cloud is dependant upon the Public Sector Network 1 (PSN), a high-performance, secure and reliable network. * All G-Cloud services will be delivered to the future Common Desktop which will include both, desk based and mobile devices. * The consolidated data centres estate that delivers the G-Cloud will meet the standards and guidelines laid down by the Greening Government ICT strategy. Business and ICT leaders will have greater agility, flexibility and choice when buying ICT services, other than those that require the highest levels of Information Security; There will be substantial cost reductions through sharing assets; It will be faster and easier to build online services in response to policy changes and evolving demand from UK citizens. 1 Public Sector Network, Common Desktop, Open Standards and Open Source and Green Government ICT are 4 further strands of the Public Sector ICT Strategy published in January 2010. DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 4

The G-Cloud bringing utility convenience to Public Sector ICT shared, flexible, agile, transparent and efficient allocation of ICT when it s needed, through sharing standardised resources to reduce costs G-Cloud is the Public Sector brand for secure, sharable cloud computing services. The G-Cloud programme will deliver utility style ICT services and will become the default model of cloud computing across the Public Sector. This change involves a move from ICT being procured, operated and maintained by individual organisations acting independently, to a new model with shared infrastructure bringing reductions in cost and complexity of delivery. This combination of private and public Cloud services ensures complete security for the areas of the Public Service that need it and use of lowest delivery cost wherever possible. The, G- Cloud will initially support applications operating at the security levels of Impact Level (IL) 0 to Impact Level (IL) 3 4. The G-Cloud within a public sector context is shown on page 6. It represents the three core service elements of a typical cloud. These being: Ready to Use Information Services delivered through a model known as Software as a Service, for example word The G-Cloud will be a combination of the private cloud 2 and trusted elements of public 3 clouds. What is Cloud Computing? Cloud Computing refers to a new method of delivering computing services from centralised data centres across the internet (or other secure but not necessarily private network), rather than hosting or operating these resources locally. To put it another way- imagine you source your computer resources the same way as your gas, electricity and water. You don t have to make your own versions of these resources, they are just piped into your home and you pay for them as a utility. This means, that in the same way we pool energy in power stations, users will be able to pool ICT resources, which reduces costs and encourages efficiency. processing and email services. A Tool kit to create and deploy new information services in a systematic way (known as Platform as a Service) building from modular components such as Employee Authentication or payment engines. 2 The private cloud will offer services to the Public Sector via secure networks (e.g. the Public Sector Network). 3 Public clouds offer services to customers (members of the public or organisations) via the internet. 4 Impact Level (IL) describes the level of sensitivity of the data that these applications may contain, IL0 corresponding to open public data, IL3 corresponding to data marked as PROTECT. DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 5

Technology solutions to store and process information (known as Infrastructure as a Service). For example many organisations today buy storage and processing services from Amazon Web Services.. The Applications Store for Government (ASG) The on-line ICT marketplace for review, comparison and selection of ICT services and business solutions for the public sector The Applications Store for Government (ASG) will be the on-line marketplace for public sector organisations to buy the ICT services they need to carry out their work, without repeating complex individual procurements. providing an ever growing range of ready to use services. The key features of the ASG will include: Last best price for services available to all users existing and new Ability to search across all available public sector ICT services Ability to download applications direct from the Application Store for Government Customer Feedback Public sector organisations can submit their own ICT services and applications for reuse by others At the moment, Public Sector organisations deal directly with software suppliers through complex individual IT contracts, buying applications individually, but not benefitting from the joined up buying power of the public sector as a whole. The large internet service providers have now proven a new approach that allows software to be hosted at one location, and shared many times by individual organisations. For example, today public sector organisations individually commission and duplicate complex ICT services (eg authentication of citizens for tax self assessment). Currently, it is difficult for other public sector organisations to take advantage of these services for their own re-use; the ASG will make this possible. The ASG will initially enable purchase of a core range of common infrastructure and application services such as storage, processing, email, and word processing software, and existing ICT services that have already been procured for cross public sector use. Public sector organisations will be expected to procure ICT services via the ASG where suitable services are available. Where this is not the case new services will be procured to G-Cloud standards under standard contractual terms that allow re-use across the public sector. These will be added to the range of services available via the ASG, thus Case Study: Application Store- Apple The best known Applications Store is provided by Apple for the iphone.. On the Apple istore, over 100,000 applications are instantly searchable and can then be downloaded for immediate use. The open nature of the development platform for iphone applications and the light touch certification regime encourages genuine innovation and a vibrant marketplace. DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 6

Data Centre Consolidation delivering Public Sector ICT services from the optimum number of high performing, energyefficient, cost-effective and standards-based data centres Existing data centre space will be rationalised into a smaller set of secure physical data centres these will host both the G-Cloud and existing legacy applications. may be discontinued, combined, re-engineered or replaced with G-Cloud services. This will improve efficiency and lower the risk exposure on delivery of public sector ICT services. Consolidation will focus on closing data centres with significant issues such as: Lack of resilience; Security concerns; Lack of capacity (space or power) and What is Data Centre Consolidation? The availability of affordable network bandwidth in massive quantities has seen many organisations review their data centre strategies. No longer is it necessary for organisations to be physically close to their data. Instead costs can be substantially reduced by consolidating on a much smaller number of data centres, in the process raising standards and saving energy and space. The primary scope of this activity will be on data centres hosting services at security levels 5 (IL s) IL0-4, however where practical and a suitable business case exists, IL5-6 data centres will also be considered. The outcome will be a significantly smaller footprint in highly virtualised 6 shared data centres which meet agreed public sector standards for resilience, security and sustainability. This resized data centre estate will be operated at a significantly lower overall cost than today. All services delivered from existing data centre facilities will be analysed to identify those which High-risk locations, for example sites that are prone to flooding. There will be a combination of private and public sector owned data centres, managed to meet ICT requirements for both new G-Cloud services and existing ICT. The Data Centres will be open to government and application providers in an approach that fosters competition and is underpinned by appropriate technical and commercial arrangements. Case Study: Data Centre Consolidation-IBM Case Study: Data Centre Consolidation The private sector has, to date, led the way in Data Centre Consolidation, as new ways to reduce ICT infrastructure have emerged, and cost reduction pressures have increased. IBM has been one of the pioneers in this area, consolidating 155 data centres world-wide to 7. HP has also successfully cut down significantly on the number of internal data centres - from 85 to 6. 5 The security level of ICT services and data is described using the Impact Level scale and is measured in the three elements of integrity, confidentiality and availability. An IL0 service can be out in the web and fully publicly accessible. An IL6 service is Top Secret. 6 Virtualisation is a method of enabling multiple applications to share a single server platform where each virtual server has the characteristics and performance capabilities of a physical server The ICT Governance Authority The Governance Authority will be a body that will be responsible for agreeing standards, overseeing the procurement and Certification DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 7

processes and resolving cross organisational issues for the G-Cloud and PSN. It will ensure that standards are upheld, and that best practice is adhered to. The Authority will work with existing communities across government, such as Information Assurance, and Service Management to ensure the quality and reliability of G-Cloud, establishing the trust that is essential for cross Public Sector use. Public Sector Engagement Departments, Local Authorities and other Public Sector bodies will play a major role in G-Cloud implementation. There will be many opportunities for different departments to work together for mutual benefit. Departments which have completed the initial G-Cloud deployment will share their experiences helping to enable Cloud migration. DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 8

3.What benefits will the programme deliver? The G-Cloud Programme s core benefits are cost reduction, improved services, faster delivery and progressing the sustainability agenda. Specifically, it enables:- 1. Lower ICT Costs: a. A sustainable reduction in the operational costs of ICT across the Public Sector; b. A reduction in the cost of transition of applications or services to a new provider; c. A rationalisation of the applications in use across the Public Sector resulting in: i. A significant reduction in application numbers. ii. Aggregated demand for the reduced numbers of applications. iii. Higher volume discounts for common applications. d. An overall reduction in the procurement cost of new services (both common and bespoke) through collective purchasing processes. 2. Faster, more flexible, and more joined up government services: a. To support a better citizen experience of government services by allowing government to provide new ICT services faster to meet citizen needs; and b. Enabling improved responsiveness to ministerial and business generated changes through faster deployment of ICT services. 3. Reduction in the Government ICT services carbon footprint: a. Through consolidating and optimising use of spare ICT capacity and decommissioning unused capacity; and b. Adoption of more carbon efficient technology. 4. Efficient Data centre estate: a. Reduction in number of data centres to an optimum number of centres providing consistently high quality, security and resilience for the applications hosted therein. Specifically, the G-Cloud Programme is expected to deliver the following savings: 300 million per annum (by 2015) by consolidating data centres in use across the Public Sector against estimated current spend in the order of 5bn; and 500 million per annum (by 2020) against an estimated current spend in the order of 5bn, through faster and more effective procurement of infrastructure and services through the Applications Store for Government (ASG). The G-Cloud Programme will help Public Sector organisations achieve cost savings without the service reductions that could otherwise be necessary. There is scope for ICT cost savings in excess of 2bn per year by 2020. During phase 2 of the Programme, a Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) has been DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 9

developed which presents an analysis of the programme costs, benefits and drivers for success. During the completion of this analysis, the Programme developed a number of critical success factors to evaluate the feasibility and desirability of a long list of potential options for delivery in compliance with Treasury Green Book guidance. Key non-financial benefits include: Increased security and resilience; Increased supply chain flexibility and value for money; Better service transformation and citizen engagement; and Enabling the Public Sector to meet its environmental and sustainability targets. Further work will be progressed in the next phase to refine the estimates of the benefits and level of investment required. Increased agility and flexibility; DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 10

4. Progress to Date Phase 1 of the G-Cloud Programme concluded in July 2009 and identified the possibility of delivering the objectives set out above. Phase 2 (October 2009 to March 2010) was led by the Cabinet Office and included representatives from over 10 Government departments. This core team also involved some 100 volunteers from a broad spectrum of ICT suppliers. A key objective throughout phase 2 was to build effective communication with stakeholders amongst both the Public Sector CIO and supplier communities. Continued, comprehensive, twoway communication is critical to the ongoing success of the programme. Key work has included: The creation of the Founding Principles for the G-Cloud Programme, and completion of all the high level design strategies for the Commercial Model, and for the standard for Technical Architecture, Service Management and Information Assurance. Development of the Intercept Approach that will identify which current contracts and projects within the public sector can be targeted for G-Cloud over the current spending review period. The creation of the Foundation Delivery Partner Campaign this will identify the public sector bodies that are best positioned to deploy the first G-Cloud services.. DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 11

5. Implementation Approach The G-Cloud programme is not adopting a big bang approach for G-Cloud. Instead, departments, Local Authorities, Health and Education will progressively become involved with the project, as contracts and changing circumstances allow. At the big picture level, the G-Cloud Programme can be considered to consist of two broad phases building the services and the initial roll out over the first five years (2010-2015) and then migrating legacy systems to the G-Cloud in the period 2014-2020, so that the G-Cloud becomes the dominant ICT delivery model. Timeline:- By the end of 2011 the programme will deliver the initial set of cloud based services to early adopters. In addition, the first data centres to be consolidated will be identified. From 2012 onwards the complexity and sensitivity of the services offered through the G-Cloud will increase, as will the numbers of bodies utilising these services. Data Centre consolidation will accelerate and rapid progress will be made in the move to a smaller number of efficient data centres. There will be a central activity to orchestrate and co-ordinate implementation of the G-Cloud activities with Public Sector organisations leading the activities in their own business communities. Key areas of Risk Engaging with the broad range of Stakeholders who will be involved: the programme will deliver outcomes that influence a significant proportion of the UK Public Sector as well as directly or indirectly influencing services provided to citizens. The G-Cloud will not only affect Public Sector ICT organisations and suppliers, but also procurement teams, legal teams, contract management the full ICT delivery lifecycle. Managing communications, collaborations and interactions with such a broad set of stakeholders will require careful planning and highly effective delivery. Information Assurance is of paramount importance to ensure the security and validity of information stored, accessed and utilised by UK citizens and the Public Sector in the delivery of services; Commercial and Legal Compliance: the G- Cloud (and particularly the Government Application Store) will rely on new procurement frameworks and methods which must be compliant with UK and EU law while also delivering value for money. In addition, the transition from many hundreds of individual contracts to the centralised G-Cloud models will require careful management; Technology Delivery: adoption of technology new to the Public Sector in an environment with multiple legacy platforms, security constraints and contractual mechanisms (although the technology itself is not new and is tried and tested within the private sector). The delivery of any large change programme involves management of significant challenges. The key focus areas for the G-Cloud Programme as it enters the delivery phase are: Adoption of industry standards where possible, the G-Cloud Programme will adopt industry standards for design, operation, management and security of the G-Cloud.

6. Next Steps Delivery of the next phase of the G-Cloud Programme will see the programme move from a relatively compact volunteer based organisation focused on the development of the vision, strategies and core architectures to an established programme. design and architecture (including development of the Service Catalogue, Information Assurance reference model and a Service Management model); Developing Transition Plans, Commercial models, Business Change Plan and Communications Plan/Brand; The objectives for 2010-2011 are: Initiate G-Cloud infrastructure and services for Central Government Departments and Local Authorities. Early services are likely to include, email, Document storage and management and collaboration tools, as well as processing and data storage services suitable for existing legacy applications.; Design and procure the Applications Store for Government to enable sharing and promotion of re-usable services across the Public Sector; Consolidate the initial government-owned and (major) supplier-owned data centres. Producing the Outline Business Case and Full Business Case and securing approval from Treasury; Engaging widely across Public Sector organisations; and; Setting up the management function for the G-Cloud including the joint Public Sector Network/G-Cloud Authority. At the conclusion of the first delivery phase (Phase 3) the G-Cloud brand and programme will be well established across the Public Sector and delivery of initial elements of the long term vision will have commenced. Phase 3 will (subject to funding) start during 2010, and will run through to end 2011. Defining the Standards and Policies for the G-Cloud and developing the high level

7. Conclusion The G-Cloud Programme will transform the way ICT is delivered across the Public Sector, through consolidating data centres and introducing shared, re-usable ICT services that will be used across the public sector - delivering substantial business benefits. No longer will Public sector organisations directly commission the entire ICT life-cycle. The G-Cloud programme with enable many needs to be met by common services, bringing even greater focus on enhancing efficiency and delivery to citizens and staff. The outcomes will give rise to: Efficient ICT: delivery of enhanced services to citizens and employees; Cost-effective ICT; with savings potentially exceeding 2bn pa by 2020; Greener ICT; with a significant reduction carbon emissions If you would like more information, or to find out ways which you can get involved then please email: john.suffolk@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk DRAFT NOT A MINISTERIAL POLICY 14