"We're now expanding the pool even further. The great advantage for us is to be agile in the delivery of projects. We're moving away from projects owning physical infrastructure," he said. "It has become IaaS but, unlike a public , we maintain full control over the infrastructure."

The requirement to deliver services and has underpinned the entire transformation program and without this level of private cloud it would be "difficult to deliver other services".

"It has worked well for us and I hope other agencies will take a look at it," he said, adding there haven't been any problems with the cloud in the time it has been operating.

"If you put the effort into getting a private cloud right the first time it will pay you back in spades. And it doesn't have to be a drawn-out process."