Public Cloud Adoption Lagging Behind Private Sector

While cloud adoption is picking up speed when it comes to the private sector, a new study shows that the public sector is still well behind its counterpart. Andy Tait, the head of public sector strategy at virtualization company VMWare, says that the public sector certainly has a rather large interest in the cloud but that desire is not matching the level of adoption rates.

Tait says that some of the reason that public agencies aren’t adopting the cloud is because of the very real security concerns that still exist when dealing with certain companies. There are also some very basic roadblocks to adoption, such as existing contracts that can’t be terminated quickly enough. “The nature of these longer-term contracts the public sector has a tendency to sign don’t necessarily have the flexibility needed to really drive innovative IT styles,” Tait said in a recent interview.

Tait says that he isn’t blaming system integrators for that,because it takes two to make a contract. He does believe that in the future, the length of the contract will be reevaluated in order to adopt newer technologies quicker.

Tait also believes that security questions surrounding the cloud will go away in the very near future. He also believes that cloud adoption in the public sector will increase as government entities lookfor more ways to cut costs. Tait said in the interview that budget cuts tend to make agencies look for ways to avoid IT departments. The executive with one of the top cloud providers in the world says that he believes that the public sector is about four years behind the adoption rates of the private sector.

The fact that the private sector has several different verticals certainly helps speed up its own cloud adoption. Industries such as healthcare, call centers and retail can all take advantage of the cloud.