Cloud Computing Migration Saves US Government $20B
A new report first cited by Forbes suggests that the US Government has saved over $20B by switching to cloud computing platforms. The study was conducted by MeriTalk and it queried over 150 IT executives within the US government. Underwriting this study was Red Hat, Inc. The report says that PaaS, better known as Platform as a Service, has slashed federal IT costs by nearly 31%. Key bullet points of this report include:
77% of IT executives within the US Government have noted that deploying newly developed software is mission critical.
- The General Accounting Office of the USA has found that 70% of federal IT budgets are spent on up keeping legacy systems.
- 41% of respondents claimed that the current software that they use is outdated and needs to be replaced.
- 95% of IT managers queried said that an immediate, noticeable benefit would be realized by migrating all of their current systems and software into the cloud.
- 90% of the respondents favored using the PaaS model as a means of data center consolidation.
The report goes on to talk about other hot topics that are being discussed in the private cloud enterprises such as support for mobile devices, management of big data, and the ability to share services among others within the cloud.
The government has realized that the cloud will save the taxpayers money and make federal employees jobs much easier. Another stat that is worth noting is that 2 out of 3 IT managers said that migrating to PaaS would benefit their teams ability to be more agile in the missions that they are asked to carry out. Given the unpredictable nature of the US government, cloud computing across all platforms makes sense because congress often passes certain legislation at the last moment and sometimes, technology needs to be on par with the pace of legislation. Based on the data gathered from this report, the IT professionals within the US government are enthusiastic about the arrival of the cloud in their work environments.
