Hounslow Council Believes In The G-Cloud

Hounslow Borough Council has reiterated its support for the much-maligned G-Cloud, claiming it will help the borough achieve its ambition of moving much of its IT infrastructure to the cloud by 2015.

Speaking to TechWeekEurope at the opening of Box’s new international headquarters in London, Anthony Kemp, director of corporate resources at the London Borough of Hounslow, said the G-Cloud simplified the procurement process, allowing it to focus on services.

He said that by moving to the cloud, the council will halve its operating costs and become more flexible than if it continued to purchase the same legacy applications it had bought previously.

G-Cloud support

Because the council has not invested a lot in its IT for a number of years, it has a free rein to look at the latest developments, said Kemp. It signed the first G-Cloud Salesforce deal earlier this year and is Box’s first UK government customer, having signed its contract through partner Softcat.

Box will be used for secure file sharing and collaboration within the council’s internal teams and external partners as well as document management for its departments. Kemp said Hounslow evaluated a number of options, including Dropbox, but found Box to be the most suitable for the enterprise, while at the same time being easy to use and quick to deploy as staff don’t need to be trained.

“As a product, it complements our strategy of public utility cloud based computing,” he said. “Initial feedback is everyone loves the product and the opportunities it will offer across the business.”

Box announced a number of new developments to its platform at its Boxworks event in San Francisco last month, including the addition of real-time collaboration feature Box Notes, the ability to add contextual information to files, and a brand new preview feature that converts documents into HTML5.

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