Survey Shows Public Sector Support For Hybrid Clouds, Little For Public Clouds

A survey of public sector IT professionals in the federal government, that was released  on Monday, reveals that only 6.9 percent of those surveyed think that accessing IT resources from a public cloud service is a viable strategy, while a vast majority of 68 percent support a private or hybrid cloud approach.

The survey by Quest Software Public Sector, a division of Quest Software, also found that there's still confusion among users about the differences between virtualization and cloud computing. And, notably, only one out of 10 respondents has devised an "exit strategy" to withdraw from cloud computing or transfer to another cloud service provider, which makes for a significant gap in cloud planning.

While the majority of respondents worked in the U.S. government, particularly in the Department of Defense, the survey also queried IT decision makers in state and local governments and at both public and private colleges and universities. It was conducted by Norwich University, the nation's oldest private military college and birthplace of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC).

Quest chose Norwich to conduct the survey to give it more independence and credibility compared to vendor-conducted surveys, said Paul Garver, chief executive officer of Quest Public Sector. Although vendors and media that cover cloud computing are very familiar with the space, the survey found that 64.7 percent of respondents in the federal space report "some level of confusion at their organization" about the difference between virtualization and cloud computing.

Virtualization is the process of running a software operating system and its other stack components as a virtual machine within a physical server. Running multiple virtual machines in one physical server increases the utilization of that server for more efficient use of IT resources.Cloud computing, on the other hand, is the operation of multiple components of a data center -- servers, storage appliances, network devices -- as one holistic IT resource. Creating a cloud that remains within a company's firewall is a private cloud, while contracting with an external company to provide IT resources is a public cloud. A combination of the two is a hybrid. "I think we have a joint responsibility from the vendor community, the media and government themselves to continue the education and awareness," said Garver.

Catalysts for adopting cloud computing in the federal government were the ability to lower costs, simplify IT management and better support the mission for their agency. Obstacles to cloud adoption, though, include upfront costs, lack of internal IT support and security risks.

Close to half of respondents indicated their own organization had no "exit strategy' for cloud computing, which Garver found "just staggering to me. After 18 months, I may find that the reliability of the cloud supplier is not what I thought, or with the SLA that was set up for it, or I found the same application provided by another supplier for half the cost," he said.

For state and local governments, 60 percent support a hybrid or private cloud model, compared to 68 percent at the federal level. Respondents at the university level would like to go even further; the survey shows 60.7 percent support for a "national higher education cloud" supported by the federal government, which would be beneficial to colleges and universities and would drive more "intra-institutional collaboration."

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