FCO Services has made the first software as a service (SaaS) available on its cloud computing infrastructure.

Huddle IL3, a platform for sharing documents, reviewing content and discussion, has been accredited for use with 'restricted' content on FCO Services' Government Secure Application Environment (GSAE).

GSAE has been developed to support cloud based working by government organisations. David Williams, FCO Services' operations director, told GGC: "We developed the platform largely for internal purposes, but evolved into thinking that it could be developed to deliver cloud services to a secure government intranet."

He said it is accessed through the Government Secure Intranet. It is currently used on a small scale internally by FCO Services, but can be scaled up and should become more widely available later this year.

Chris Moxey, chief operating officer of FCO Services, said: "The GSAE Platform has been created specifically to meet the needs of the public sector, which needs to access and utilise SaaS applications at IL3 (restricted) and IL4 (confidential). As a trusted partner to government with a considerable amount of experience in secure ICT, we are confident that we can support other government organisations to move securely into the cloud."

Williams said the organisation is in "exploratory discussions" with other SaaS providers and would like to build a family of complimentary services to be available on GSAE. These could include some that comply with higher level security demands.

FCO Services is a trading fund of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that provides a range of services to other government departments, including secure ICT.

Huddle, whose IL2 collaboration platform is already used by Whitehall departments, recently claimed an agreement that made it the first supplier of cloud services to deal with government as a single customer.

Chris Pennell, principal analyst at Kable, commented: "Notwithstanding the fact that FCO services is perhaps not the best known organisation outside of Whitehall, the ability to offer IL3 services to the public sector is a big step in the ability of Whitehall to use cloud based services."

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