Public sectors reluctant to embrace cloud: IDC survey

Over half of public sector organisations have no budget assigned specifically to cloud computing, according to an IDC survey.

The IDC Government Insights report of IT decision-makers also found that none of the respondents have more than 15% budget allocated to cloud, and highlights top recommendations for public sector CIO’s and IT professionals considering moving the cloud.

46% of respondents expressed that concerns about security are holding back the adoption of cloud computing by governments, whilst 36.3% of respondents agree that current laws and regulations hinder the use of cloud computing by their government agency or department

IT management was ranked as the most suitable function for public cloud services, followed by data backup, archive services, and application development and testing. For private cloud services, data backup, archive services and server or storage capacity on demand were considered most suitable functions

Over 50% of respondents agreed that use of cloud services would reduce the volume of data stored on laptops and other personal devices in their government agency/department and thereby reduce the potential for data loss.

The report concluded that the survey shows the clear opportunity for public sector organisations to capitalise on the benefits of cloud, as well as an uneasiness of ‘walking into the unknown.”

“Western European government respondents are very conservative. Although there is some commitment to cloud, it is telling that in almost all instances, more than 75% of respondents said they had not deployed and were not planning to deploy cloud for any solution in the next 12 months,” said Jan Duffy, EMEA research director at Government Insights.

“It should be said that across the other regions, such as Central and Eastern Europe and Asia/Pacific, government respondents were equally conservative. There seems to be little doubt that despite the rhetoric, the private sector continues to lead the way in take-up of cloud services. Given the expectations of many that cloud computing will play a major role in government computing, it is a big surprise that the increases expected in cloud budgets over the next three years are so small,” she added.