A presentation for UKTech

1. www.eduserv.org.uk
Digital Marketplace
The good, the bad,
…and the ugly
Andy Powell
Head of Product Marketing
Managed Cloud Services, Eduserv

2. www.eduserv.org.uk
The good, the bad,
…and the ugly
Andy Powell
Head of Product Marketing
Managed Cloud Services, Eduserv

3. Background
• Eduserv are a managed cloud service provider
• And a not-for-profit
• Listed on G-Cloud since G-Cloud 2
• We currently list 17 services
• Mix of Lot 1, Lot 3 and Lot 4
• We aim for a relatively small number of relatively large
customers
• G-Cloud business to date: >£10m (of which >£7.5m on IaaS)

4. The good…
• Huge step forward in terms of how government engages
with its suppliers – particularly SMEs
• Driving culture change towards “cloud adoption”
• Massive streamlining of the procurement process for
both suppliers and buyers
• Digital Marketplace as a single shop-front and focal point
• Downwards pressure on price
• Upwards pressure on value-for-money

5. For Eduserv in particular…
• Enforced rigour around service definitions and pricing
• Improved shared understanding of the products we offer
(within the business)
• G-Cloud and the Digital Marketplace has effectively
become our product catalog
• Even where sales are not thru G-Cloud
• Efficiency gains around delivery of commoditised
solutions

6. Less good, for Eduserv in particular
• Cultural change is slow
• Buyers have taken time to adopt a ‘cloud’ mentality
• We still get asked
• to respond to PQQs and ITTs where all the answers
are already in our G-Cloud service descriptions
• “can you change this bit of your service just for us?”
• “what is your best price?”

9. The bad (more generally)
• Inconsistency of service descriptions
• Particularly unit price
• SFIA rate card
• Those security questions
• “Price available on request”

10. Could do better
• Search results
• Lack of analytics

11. And a bit ugly
• The 20% thing
• The rah rah around sales
• Where ‘religion’ meets the real-world…

12. www.eduserv.org.uk
Questions and thoughts?