Andrea Di MaioAfter two days at the largest Gartner US Symposium ever, with almost 8,000 attendees, and a number of conversations about the use of cloud computing in government, I have the strange feeling that I have been transported back in time to this same location (Orlando) one year ago at our 2010 symposium.
I ran a panel with three distinguished guests for local and federal government, and met three government clients and two vendors in one-on-ones, and I could have had those same exact conversation in October 2010. Here are a few examples:
- The dynamics between CIOs and business executives who ask them why they are not yet using cloud “which is so cheap”
- The hesitation of IT professionals to pursue cloud solution due to security and data sovereignty concerns
- The uncertainties about whether terms of conditions of cloud services can really deliver the promised savings under not-totally-predictable use scenarios
- The budgetary consequences of moving from capital to operational spending
- The lack of maturity of some government organizations in articulating an IT service catalog and service levels to be used as a baseline to decide whether and how to use external cloud services.
- The ambiguity between data center consolidation and virtualization on the one hand, and developing a private cloud on the other hand: I have heard a couple of times terms like “quasi-cloud” or “cloud-like”, as if people felt ashamed to say that they were looking to more traditional delivery models as they could not see the case for cloud yet.
So, while some interesting deployments of cloud services do exist – and our panelists showed that benefits can exceed risks – I have not seen yet any substantial progress from 2011. People keep talking about how wonderful cloud can be, how much money can be saved in the big scheme of things, but these pronouncements seem to be the same we have been hearing for almost two years now.
What is missing are solid TCO, ROI and public value frameworks that help CIOs and other IT leaders determine the real advantages of cloud as a sourcing model, in order to compare it to other, more or less traditional sourcing models (such as hosting, managed services, outsourcing, infrastructure utilities, community and open source, and so forth).
6 responses so far ↓
1 Bruce Whitlock October 18, 2011 at 9:42 am
Many of us greet the savings with skepticism. Last week Steve O’Keefe of Meritalk published an analysis of fed datacenter consolidations savings. I think this is indicative of projected cloud savings. Using agency published data approximately 20% of fed centers have been consolidated. Published savings were about $14M. one could have projected savings for 20% of the centers to reach between $2B and $8B, not a paltry $14M. The implementation costs of consolidation are tremendous. Some of us think the same will apply to cloud.
2 Is It Still Too Early for Governments to Use Cloud Computing? | Cloud 2 | Scoop.it October 18, 2011 at 9:59 am
[...] Is It Still Too Early for Governments to Use Cloud Computing? RT @AndreaDiMaio Is It Still Too Early for Governments to Use #Cloud Computing? – http://t.co/peEIFiwp #GartnerSym: Is It Still Too … Source: blogs.gartner.com [...]
3 Is It Still Too Early for Governments to Use Cloud Computing? | LdS Innovation | Scoop.it October 18, 2011 at 11:23 am
[...] Is It Still Too Early for Governments to Use Cloud Computing? [...]
4 Bob Goh October 18, 2011 at 10:32 pm
You have to think twice before moving systems/data center to the cloud when your country is relying on a single internet pipe to the rest of the world. This is especially true for New Zealand. Unless the cloud computing provider and their data centers are located in NZ, moving systems to to the ‘oversea’ cloud added new risks to the business.
5 Cloud in Government: One Step Forward, One Step Back October 19, 2011 at 6:14 am
[...] As I said, lots of interest, but still lots of uncertainty. [...]
6 行政機関でクラウドコンピューティングを使うのは、まだ早いのか？ | Synapse Diary October 19, 2011 at 8:05 am
[...] Is It Still Too Early for Governments to Use Cloud Computing? [...]