The public sector has been slow to follow the private sector’s lead when it comes to the adoption of Cloud-based solutions. As many government agencies are strapped for cash, switching from on-premise solutions to Web-accessible, subscription-based solutions hold a number of benefits, including decreased initial investment with monthly pricing and a flexible architecture that can easily scale as agencies grow and shrink.
With a properly deployed Cloud solution and connecting security protocols, Cloud solutions today can be just as secure as their on-premise counterparts. Cloud vendors will have to make an effort to defeat the perception that their solutions are not secure enough for the public sector. In a recent article on Software Advice–a website that provides reviews of e-procurement software–Michael Koploy has written about four ways that procurement can move to the Cloud in State of the Union: Public Sector and the Cloud.
Two ways software companies can do so is:
(1) Advocate a private Cloud. This is a viable consideration for software companies wishing to market to the public sector. With a private Cloud, the public sector groups would maintain ownership of the application and its connected data. Adoption of private Cloud solutions is expected to be higher among public-sector buyers than private-sector buyers, according to Webber.
(2) Specialize for the public sector. Solutions can’t simply be repackaged for the public sector. There are multiple levels of regulatory and decision-making decisions that make repackaging a private-sector version for the government often unsuccessful. Vendors will have to develop public-sector versions of their software if they hope to see mass adoption of their Cloud solutions.
He also writes about two trends of in the US public sector that he sees having an impact on deployment of Cloud software solutions in procurement:
(1) Increasing number of public-private partnerships (P3s). While P3s have been prevalent throughout Europe, these partnerships are gaining increasingly common in the US, especially for large infrastructure projects such as highway and toll-road construction. As these coalitions increasingly crop up and the need for technology solutions arise, their budgets will be limited and subscription-based Cloud solutions may be the only option.
(2) Increasing number of software buying groups. Webber notes that some government groups at even the municipal level are continually banding together to jointly purchase cloud-based solutions. Because these solutions are accessible from anywhere and do not require hosting, thinly spread “groups” such as these will become more popular buyers.
While the Cloud has a long way to go in the public sector, that isn’t to say one day it will completely replace traditional, on-premise solutions. Rather, both of these deployment models and infrastructures will work in tandem throughout both the public- and private-sectors.
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