Survey Finds Widespread Concerns about Government Cloud Initiatives

Staffing, cloud management and Cloud First budget cuts are top-of-mind as the Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, leaves office.

According to a survey of 113 FOSE attendees conducted by IT operations and cloud management software provider ScienceLogic, Inc., two-thirds of federal agencies have identified applications that will move to the cloud and half of those have started the migration process per Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s Cloud First policy. The Cloud First policy was laid out by Kundra in December 2010 and requires all government agencies to identify and migrate three ‘must move’ services to cloud solutions within 18 months, with at least one service fully migrated within 12 months.

Key results highlighted in the FOSE survey include:

  • 92% of those that have started migration to the cloud are concerned about the performance and availability of services hosted in the cloud, and 63 % say they will require additional tools to manage and monitor government cloud resources.
  • Overall, 79% of the total surveyed are concerned about performance and availability of applications in the cloud
  • Only 9% are not concerned with the performance and availability of services hosted in the cloud, and 12% have not thought about it
  • 40% say that Cloud First has impacted their planned IT operations in some way
  • 38% say they are still waiting to see if the Cloud First policy will impact IT operations
  • One-third have identified applications to move to the cloud, but have not started migration
  • 34% have not identified or started migration to the cloud
  • 65% of respondents are concerned that internal budget allocated to implement the Cloud First policy, including new solutions required to manage and monitor IT operations in the cloud, will shrink after Kundra resigns from his position in August.

David Link, CEO of ScienceLogic says “While our survey indicates the Cloud First policy has not achieved rapid adoption, two-thirds of respondents have taken some action towards cloud deployments, highlighting the continued desire for cloud computing within the government. An overwhelming majority however are concerned about safeguarding IT services in this new cloud environment, which may be why swift government cloud adoption has stalled. This is not surprising considering the precursors to cloud, including virtualization and data center consolidation, present their own complex IT management challenges.”

“With Kundra leaving office, uncertainty around budget, tools and staff have put government organizations in a holding pattern,” continued Link. “Technology that enables organizations to expertly manage IT services across a changing mix of data center and cloud environments will be of utmost importance to ensure the success of the Cloud First initiative, even after its strongest supporter moves on.”

ScienceLogic recently launched ScienceLogic EM7™ version 7.1 to help government organizations manage heterogeneous physical, virtual and cloud environments as one entity and easily incorporate new applications and the latest-generation technologies into their IT operations.

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