Survey shows federal agencies are still in early stages of deploying the cloud

Survey shows federal agencies are still in early stages of deploying the cloudSubmitted by Sumit Yayavar on Thu, 01/16/2014 - 12:22 

A new survey - GovLoop's latest Agency of the Future Guide - has revealed that even though federal agencies are aware of the fact that cloud computing has wide-ranging benefits, most of the agencies are still in the early stages so far as the deployment of the cloud is concerned.
Though cloud computing can unfold numerous advantages - including information sharing, cost reductions, and personnel efficiency, among others - for federal agencies, the results of the new survey show that the cloud is not being used by nearly 48 percent of the agencies at present.

The survey - which involved the participation of 223 federal, state and local government employees and contractors - also revealed that though most of the respondents were familiar with the cloud concept, they could not distinguish between the different cloud environments.
In response to questions about what cloud environments the agencies were investing in, almost 55 percent of the respondents said that they were not sure; 34 percent chose software as a service (SaaS); 23 percent selected platform as a service (PaaS), and 22 percent opted for infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
About the challenges which are faced by agencies in adopting a cloud model, the survey showed that a move to cloud computing requires the agencies to modify their policies to accommodate use of the cloud; improve security capabilities, gather management support; and effectively identify which applications reside on an agency network and if and how their migration to the cloud is possible.