Guest post from Anati Zubia, Senior Marketing & Event Coordinator
An increasing number of CIOs in education and government are moving to the cloud as a strategy to reduce costs. However, these organizations are confronting the same questions about security and availability as their business counterparts have been grappling with for the past several years. This raises the question: Is cloud right for government and education?
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According to IDC Government Insights, nearly one-third of the federal government’s IT budget is devoted to the maintenance of aging infrastructure, a number that IDC believes is similar at the state and local levels as well. In June, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced its intentions to move its IT systems to the cloud. The NRC’s CIO, Darren Ash, said that his main concerns with the move were not with security–although it is a priority, of course–but with having an exit strategy in case the NRC later decides to move its cloud services to another provider.
Likewise, education is finding the cloud to be a significant cost-saver. In 2012, the Chicago public school system transitioned parts of its IT to the cloud, and expects to save $6 million over the next three years. The city of Boston made a similar move with its public worker and education communications system to cut its IT expenses by 30 percent every year.
With the momentum apparently growing in the education and government sector, is now the time for these CIOs to make the move to cloud? Or is this just hype, and should these organizations be more cautious?
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