Survey shows state agencies' growth to provision cloud applications and services

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Jan 23, 2019, 05:00 ET

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A majority of state IT leaders expect their agencies to shift the bulk of their IT investment funds towards cloud computing models over the next three years, according to a new survey.

Seven in 10 state IT decision makers polled in the survey said their agency will devote most of their IT investments towards a combination of cloud models — including government-only community clouds, commercial clouds or a hybrid approach — over the next three years.

That compares to 6 in 10 federal IT executives in a parallel survey, suggesting state agencies appear better able, or more inclined, to invest in cloud computing than their federal counterparts.

These and other findings are highlighted in a new "State Cloud Readiness Report," produced by StateScoop and sponsored by VMware, Intel and Carahsoft. The study explores the progress of state agencies in adopting cloud computing for eight types of workloads — from email and website platforms to enterprise-level services and applications.

Two in 10 respondents said their agencies are now ready to "provision cloud services" or "operate cloud environments at scale" for mission support applications as well as for business applications such as financial management systems.

About twice as many, however, are still at the preliminary assessment or selection stage of Gartner's 6-stage cloud readiness scale.

"The findings suggest an uneven playing field among state agencies for how quickly they can migrate essential applications and services to the cloud," said Wyatt Kash, senior vice president at Scoop News Group.

State agencies continue to gain familiarity with deploying cloud services, however IT leaders express concern about the capability of their agencies to contract and acquire cloud services using available vehicles.

Six in 10 state IT executives, for instance, said their agency has inadequate or only average acquisition capability to contract cloud services. And an equal proportion rated available contract vehicles for acquiring cloud services "difficult to use" or average at best, suggesting more must be done to update and streamline cloud acquisition practices.

State IT officials, however, reported taking a number of steps to move faster to the cloud. In particular, they are opting to replace selected applications with cloud-ready alternatives and turning to cloud providers to offer greater support with migration efforts.

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SOURCE Scoop News Group