Talal Rad is CTO Group’s Technology Capability Leader. Contact him directly via email or through his LinkedIn account.
Much has been written about cloud computing in recent times, and here at CTO Group we have been fortunate enough to work with several Federal Government customers and have witnessed first-hand the current cloud adoption trends.
Taking Federal Government as an example, if we look at the typical factors for adopting cloud computing, they broadly fit into the following categories:
This is where the value of cloud computing becomes particularly appealing. It removes constraints associated with the procurement, delivery and consumption of ICT services, enabling agencies to focus on providing high value outcomes to the Commonwealth and to the citizen.
In our recent engagements with Federal Government customers, we have been observing some opposing forces between Public Cloud and Private Cloud adoption.
Pulling in one direction, we are seeing many Federal Government customers adopt Public Cloud computing. This trend looks set to continue, with Gartner predicting that the Public Cloud market will increase a further 18% in 2017 to total $246 billion, up from $209 billion in the previous year. Locally, this trend has also been supported by the recent expansion of ASD’s Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL) which paves the way for wider scale government adoption.
In recent times however, and probably less well known, are examples of high profile Public Cloud outages and numerous cases of “cloud bill shock” which have prompted organisations to either re-assess their consumption of Public Cloud offerings or, in extreme cases, withdraw from the Public Cloud due to higher than expected costs. These examples are only a subset of the many considerations which must be taken into account when evaluating Public Cloud offerings.
Pulling in the opposing direction, we are seeing an emerging trend for our other Federal Government customers drive towards on-premises Private Cloud “Hyper-Converged Integrated Systems (HCIS)” adoption. HCIS provide the same Public Cloud-like attributes such as speed, flexibility, elasticity and economics, but without the perceived “loss of control” stigma that is sometimes attached to Public Cloud computing. More broadly, momentum in HCIS is also increasing, with Gartner predicting the market for HCIS would grow 79 percent to reach almost $2 billion in 2016, propelling it toward mainstream use in the next five years. According to Gartner, HCIS will be the fastest-growing segment of the overall market for integrated systems, reaching almost $5 billion, which is 24 percent of the market, by 2019. This is a compelling option for those who may not be ready to transition to the Public Cloud, or for those looking for an incremental step towards hybrid-cloud interoperability.
Both Public Cloud and Private Cloud HCIS represent perfectly viable platforms for any organisation. If you need help assessing which way to go, please contact me directly or through my LinkedIn account.