Governments are considering cloud technologies in a bid to drive more efficient operations

Tags: cloud computing, asia/pacific, accountability, government, public policy, healthcare reforms, virtualization

The recent global recession has increased public scrutiny and accountability demands on the IT budgets of government organizations. Paradoxically, these organizations are increasingly under pressure to raise service competency and productivity. This cost and performance management irony has propelled public agencies to look to other technological alternatives, such as cloud computing solutions.

In the latest IDC Government Insights study, “Looking Ahead: Articulating Cloud Competencies for the Aisa/Pacific Public Sector (Doc #AP9694203S)", IDC Government Insights discussed the trends driving the adoption of cloud technologies, whether public, private or a hybrid of both models, and the concerns over the use of cloud computing technologies in the public sector such as security, reliability and regulatory compliance.

In general, most public sector agencies are widely dispersed operational silos and have an urgent need to coordinate and integrate the various egovernment functions. Notably, the challenge today is that these agencies face varying policy and operational restrictions which translate to different needs and scales on their IT capacity. As the business case for the traditional data center is no longer sustainable in the long run, the adoption of cloud computing technologies in the public sector has become a viable option.

We note that the Asia/Pacific public sector is still apprehensive about the adoption of cloud computing especially in agencies that handle sensitive information. Most of the initiatives today are still at an experimental stage as the public sector tries to determine the return on investment (ROI) and weigh the risks involved in the adoption of cloud computing technologies.

Governments should take an active change management stance to address the people and process aspects of cloud implementations, such as revolutionizing traditional workflows and facilitating interoperable standards to bring about greater inter-agency coordination. All the stakeholders involved need to internalize the value and application of the cloud model so as to truly realize a continued and successful egovernment transformation.

We are also expecting data protection and security solutions such as "rights-management-as-a-service", and integrated business intelligence and analytics applications to feature strongly as key technological innovations that lead the adoption of cloud computing for the public sector.

Inevitably, apart from cost management agendas, public sector agencies will need to define their own set of business requirements for cloud computing solutions. This means they have to explore and gather distinctive proficiency and awareness towards building a specialized enterprise-grade cloud services model that fits the unique environment it serves. Thus, the eventual adoption of cloud technologies, whether public, private or a hybrid of both models, lies fundamentally on the operational requirements it seeks to address.

Concerns in the Cloud: Issues for Manufacturers

Tags: cloud computing, manufacturing, supply chain, it priorities

The CIOs of many manufacturing companies are in a dilemma; they are being tasked to reduce costs, optimize existing infrastructure investments, and provide new applications to support the business. Whilst it is easy to say these things, the delivery of new strategic applications to the business, with a smaller team, is much more difficult. One possible solution to the CIO's dilemma is the use of cloud computing.

However, our research shows that whilst cloud options are being considered, manufacturers have a number of concerns that vendors will need to address.

According to the IDC Manufacturing Insights Asia/Pacific Business and IT Priorites survey, April 2009:

The biggest concern is security: close to 60% of the survey respondents cited confidentiality of company information as their prime concern. The need to protect financial information is a given, and this typically has not been an area where we see interest in cloud computing initiatives. But even if we look beyond the ERP systems, there is a growing need for the protection of intellectual property as well as security of supply chain information. So as new applications connecting the supply chain and supporting product lifecycle management are being considered, security is the top concern.

The second rated issue with just over 50% of all companies citing as a concern is that the cloud delivery model is not able to replicate and support business processes that are specific to the company. As companies seek to differentiate themselves, their applications become increasingly personalized, and the question I often find myself discussing these days is: Can the cloud deliver – and how? This also relates to data integration concerns, where over 40% of respondents expressed their concerns over data integration from applications in the cloud to applications within the four walls.

The third-highest ranked area of concern was the view that moving to a cloud model will not be cost effective in the long term. The shift from a capex to an opex model has long been discussed, and where the shift to an opex model will benefit in the short term by getting new applications deployed and/or scaled quickly, the long-term cost implications are a concern that vendors will need to address if they want companies to embrace this new way of operating.

Cloud does offer a lot of opportunity for manufacturing companies to embrace new applications and scale very quickly; however, vendors must ensure that the needs of security, personalization and ROI are addressed before cloud becomes widely adopted in the manufacturing segment.