Federal, state and local agencies, as well as institutions of higher learning, will increase cloud use and spending noticeably in the next five years, according to a July and August 2016 online survey of 300 cloud adopters conducted by MeriTalk.
The study — “Destination Cloud: The Federal and SLED Cloud Journey,” underwritten by NetApp and Avnet Government solutions — finds the strategies of public sector cloud adopters are being driven by improvements in productivity, customer service and cost efficiency.
These benefits have 85 percent of feds surveyed, as well as 81 percent of education IT managers and 76 percent of state and local respondents, saying they will increase cloud spending in 2017 and potentially double use over five years. Within just the next year it’s estimated that $240 billion of the world’s IT budget will be spent on cloud.
This comes as it is projected that the percentage of applications that run in the cloud will increase from 33 to 58 percent by 2021 to take advantage of speed, flexibility and scalability. However, there is a lot of skepticism about the security of using public cloud web hosting, email, productivity, collaboration and backup services.
Federal IT professionals in particular — more so than both educational, state and local respondents — lean toward the private cloud for sensitive and specialized applications and emphasize the importance of on-premise, in-house security planning, certification and audits from vendors.
“Agencies and institutions must factor regulations, budget constraints and the limitations of legacy systems — leaving them with little flexibility to respond to evolving mission demands,” Rob Stein, NetApp’s vice president for the U.S. public sector, said in a news release. “Public sector adopters are looking to take advantage of the benefits of cloud, but they need a solution that allows them to manage, migrate and secure their most valuable assets as needed.”
No matter the solution or destination, migration strategies and risk mitigation will be paramount for a successful cloud transition.
