GovTech Cloud platform expands to cope with Brexit demand

Public sector cloud services provider UKCloud has announced that it has completed an expansion of its sovereign cloud platform to support public sector organisations through Brexit-related challenges.

The cloud data storage platform cited growing concerns about the implications of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU on areas such as customer capacity, IT supply chain logistics, the cost of US dollar-based licenses and services, and uncertainty as to long term requirements of data protection regulations and national security needs.

The company said it had taken steps to ensure sufficient capacity is available regardless of how Brexit is finally implemented, driven by the increasing number of UK public sector organisations contacting them about potential cloud capacity – in some cases to support new systems required post-Brexit and, in other cases, as a contingency due to concerns about the continued use of non-UK data hosting options.

Matt Franklin, chief executive of ROC Technologies, a client of UK Cloud, said: “Public sector organisations have been challenged due to the uncertainty of how Brexit will be delivered.

He added “Many projects were on hold for too long, and it’s now clear that some won’t be ready by 29th March. This doesn’t factor in the many systems that are currently running on non-UK platforms that might be put under public pressure to be brought back to the UK.”

Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud, underlined that cloud technology is now an essential enabler of digital public services and that providers should ensure that datacentre, compute and storage capacity will be in place for the potential influx of customer orders on and after the expected date of Brexit on 29 March.

“As a key supplier to the UK public sector, it is our duty to make the arrangements necessary to be ready for whatever Brexit is delivered,” said Hansford.

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