hilst in London recently speaking at a developer conference, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took the opportunity to deliver a stinging criticism of the UK government’s cloud computing implementation record to date. Under the title of the “G-Cloud”, the British government has been attempting to reduce the number of datacentres currently used across local and national agencies.

Benioff was clear that he believes the UK is behind the US in terms of government cloud adoption and as a result was missing out on the potential for significant “cost reduction”. Worse still, in Benioff’s opinion, UK government datacentres are running well below maximum efficiency. “That’s not ok,” he said, “It’s costing them a fortune.”

However Benioff’s comments are not merely the rantings of a service provider with a vested interest. Statistics available on the European Commission’s website further reinforce the view that the UK government’s tardiness in joined up IT systems is a costly mistake, also resulting in a loss of competitive advantage over other EU neighbour states.

The apparent lack of government desire to implement electronic supply chains and the like also has a knock on effect for national businesses. The Digital Agenda for Europe collates data regarding the use of EDI systems for inter-business trading, the results of which make quite shocking reading. It is only in the previous calendar year that the UK has finally begun to implement Electronic Supply Chain Management in anger, finally moving from the bottom of the table where the country had languished since records began two years earlier. Shockingly, the UK is still far, far behind other countries including Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania and Cyprus.

Unfortunately these statistics are replicated across a number of other data sets relating to electronic invoicing and the automatic exchange of business documents. As before the UK lags behind almost all of their European neighbours in these key indicators, suggesting that UK businesses are missing out on the efficiencies and costs savings available.

Benioff and the Digital Agenda for Europe statistics are unable to explain why uptake of these cost-saving systems are so low in the UK and why businesses keep choosing to miss the opportunity afforded them. Whether it is a misconception as to the complexity of implementation of EDI, a poor understanding of the benefits or just a general ennui, the fact remains that British businesses are losing out to themselves and to their neighbours.

Benioff’s suggested solution, to move systems into the cloud, makes perfect sense. Businesses choosing to implement a hosted Electronic Invoicing Presentment and Payment (EIPP) system, an electronic supply chain management strategy or automated document exchange mechanism such as Celtrino’s Smart Admin will see immediate benefits. It is through such adoptions that UK businesses have the opportunity to guide the government to the cloud and not vice versa.