Public sector looking to cloud computing

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Many IT professionals in the public sector are starting to look at cloud computing technologies for their organisations, but there aren't too many who have already taken the plunge.

New research from Insight EMEA has shown 57 per cent were considering the likes of cloud hosted applications and services. However, only 22 per cent had installed the solutions.

Virtualisation was showing better signs of growth in this side of industry with 67 per cent claiming they had undertaken virtualisation of their servers. This figure fell to 28 per cent when it came to those who had deployed application or desktop virtualisation, but the research also showed 49 per cent were looking into taking them on.

The main drivers for the public sector towards the cloud is the need for increased efficiency and lower costs during tough economic times, with 66 per cent of respondents citing this as their reasons.

“The downturn is having a maintained effect on many organisations and their approach to IT spending,” claimed Guy Beaudin, public sector business development director at Insight.

“Organisations are considering their approach to how they source their IT requirements more carefully, and approaches based on cloud-hosted applications or shared services models are being implemented to meet the challenges of reduced budgets.”

However, the deployment of these technologies will be a slow process, with 40 per cent saying they would only be taking on “bite-sized projects” to give quick results and 20 per cent saying they wouldn't be investing in new equipment but merely optimising what they already had.

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