Head of the G-Cloud programme, Denise McDonagh, said back in April that she was 'fully expecting' AWS to soon be on the G-Cloud framework, having not been signed the first time round. The same was said for Salesforce.com, which has now been awarded as one of the suppliers for G-Cloud ii.

At the time McDonagh said AWS had been put off by the terms and conditions in the contract, specifically about the right to audit their US data centres.

The original G-Cloud was launched in February, and the government has said it will continue to release iterations of the framework in a bid to continuously sign new suppliers and build a bigger offering.

AWS and the Cabinet Office were not available for comment at time of publication.

Three quarters of the 458 suppliers are said to be SMEs, something which Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude has said proves that the government is making it easier for SME suppliers to compete for public sector business.