Despite the Federal CIO Council’s efforts to convince agencies to adopt cloud-based ICT services the US government has been lagging behind the private sector in terms of uptake.
“There are clear indications that Fiscal year 2014 will continue to be a flat year for cloud computing investments,” said Shawn McCarthy, Research Director at IDC Government Insights.
“Yet beyond that, growth potential looks bright. Investments should reach a critical mass around 2015 and beyond. A new emphasis on cloud solutions is expected to return within the next 18 months, and private cloud investments should approach $7.7 billion by FY2017,” he said.
The firm believes forecast spending trends 2013 and 2014 are due to budget sequestration, a slowdown in systems consolidation across myriad public sector entities, and the complexities involved with setting government-wide standards for enterprise IT architecture – particularly within a context of public sector IT spending cuts.
Leading the adoption of cloud services within the US federal government include the Treasury Department, the Social Security Administration and the Justice Department.
Despite software as a service being the most popular flavour of cloud services today, the report – Perspective: Growth and Slight Contraction – Government Cloud Spending by U.S. Federal Agency – revealed infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to be the leading cloud segment tapped by the federal public service, which is expected to account for $1bn of the projected $1.7bn spend in 2014.
But public cloud spending only accounts for about ten per cent of the total IaaS spend, as most government bodies have invested in private cloud solutions following promises of higher security and better availability.
Spending on community clouds and hybrid clouds, largely driven by public sector organisations looking to connect older mainframes with newer architectures, will remain flat or decline over the next 18 months.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Jonathan Brandon
Quelle/Source: Business Cloud News, 15.07.2013
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