As Cloud Computing gains more attention from government customers, it presents new challenges and demands a different set of skills to become successful. Having a clear understanding of the business’ challenges and the benefits that may be obtained from the cloud becomes even more important.
In my conversations with different government organizations about Cloud Computing, three distinct challenges keep coming up.
#1: Reducing Costs. More than ever, agencies have the pressure to reduce costs at all levels. Dealing with shrinking budgets and demands for newer services has forced agencies to carefully look for areas that may be optimized or simplified. While many agencies struggle to keep the lights on, they are forced to look at alternate ways to provide services. Cloud services has become an attractive way to address those demands and provide new services to its citizens.
The pressure to reduce costs has also forced agencies with common needs to work together and find ways to collaborate and simplify operations. This is different from the past, where agencies could not justify or were not interested in combining computing resources with other agencies.
