How Cloud First became Microsoft First for the UK public sector

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How did the UK government’s Cloud First strategy become, in practice, Microsoft First?

In this episode of Ctrl Alt Lead, Penny Horwood speaks to Bill McCluggage, former Director of IT Strategy and Policy at the Cabinet Office, about the growing concentration of the UK public sector technology market.

Bill argues that decades of perfectly rational procurement decisions have created a deep dependency on Microsoft across cloud infrastructure, productivity software and now AI. Moving away can mean confronting switching costs, interoperability problems and changes to identity, data and skills, making meaningful competition increasingly difficult.

With Copilot adding another layer to that technology stack, Penny and Bill discuss whether AI risks deepening existing cloud lock-in, why multicloud has failed to deliver on some of its early promises, and what this means for technology sovereignty.

They also examine the role of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), why Bill believes regulators need to move more quickly, and what public sector buyers can do to create genuine competition rather than simply defaulting to more of the same.

In this episode:

• How Cloud First became “Microsoft First”
• Why short-term savings can create long-term technology dependency
• The barriers to switching cloud providers
• Why multicloud has proved difficult in practice
• How Copilot and agentic AI could deepen vendor lock-in
• The implications for UK digital and AI sovereignty
• What the CMA can do to encourage greater competition
• The questions technology leaders should ask before their next major procurement

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LinkedIn: @computing-- / Tom Allen / Penny Horwood

Are you an IT leader with a story to tell? Get in touch by emailing tomallen@thechannelcompany.com.

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