Why are UK alternatives important?
When a developer or organisation starts building a new digital service or product, they nearly always start the same way. First, you make a prototype. Perhaps you just “throw something together with a Google form”, or perhaps you “knock something up on AWS”. Over time, these building blocks have a habit of sticking around. What was initially a means to an end becomes part of the fabric of delivering everything.
People get used to these habits. If it works well the first time, they repeat it the next time, and the next time, and the next. Then the services and platforms that they use become ubiquitous, even “standard”.
This presents a challenge when the global standard for products and services, are platforms that operate out of countries that are not your own. Legislation in your country may not apply in others. Equally, products and services developed elsewhere may not meet the legal requirements here.
You may find that your data is being stored in a country that is undergoing a rapid and unexpected regime change. Perhaps your data is not as safe as you thought. Perhaps the owners of the systems that you once thought were benign, are behaving in a way that threatens you or your service’s stability or safety.
Your motivation may be financial. If you’re a UK VAT registered business, you can reclaim your VAT when you buy from others. Maybe you simply want to support local businesses, whether that’s nationally, regionally, or even in the same town or city. But, you can’t do any of this if these organisations don’t exist.
We need a UK based digital service infrastructure. Services that support rapid innovation, as well as growing and scaling businesses. Our hope is that, by mapping what exists and highlighting the gaps, we can begin to create an ecosystem that delivers what we need, here in the UK.