Granicus, which serves the government with its cloud platform, launched its new AppStore, which is meant to provide its customers—and presumably its channel partners—with an easier and faster way to procure, deploy and manage public sector cloud applications.

According to the company, the Granicus AppStore was designed to drive down cloud procurement and management costs while also accelerating the adoption of the cloud in the North American government sector. The company noted more than 1,000 government agencies on the Granicus platform will have access to the AppStore, where they can select from applications and then deploy them.

"As government agencies turn to the cloud, the number of civic startups building innovative cloud-based solutions is quickly multiplying," said Tom Spengler, co-founder and CEO of Granicus, in a prepared statement. "The Granicus AppStore puts the best of those solutions in one convenient place, cutting down on research time, accelerating procurement, and providing government IT the peace of mind they want with a proven cloud platform they can trust."

Granicus claims to serve more than 63,000 government staff users and 8 million citizens each year. Included in its list of applications popular among government agencies is iLegislate, Boards & Commissions, SeeClickFix, OpenGov, ReCollect, Textizen and License123, but the company boasts many more apps on its cloud platform.

Considering the growing importance of the Cloud First initiative and the fact that the FedRAMP certification deadline is quickly approaching, there's a lot of interest among cloud services providers in the public sector space. And it's not an easy sector to serve, as there are various special application and compliance requirements to properly serve its end users and their customers.

Granicus also takes its cloud platform to market through a small network of partners. And for the channel, the number of opportunities in the public sector cloud space is growing rapidly.