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Expert: Cloud now ‘de facto deployment method’ in government

Cloud adoption has seen growth across the board in the last 18 months, and organizations are now ready to migrate more mission-critical applications to cloud-based infrastructure, according to new research.

Released Thursday, Verizon’s “2013 State of the Enterprise Cloud Report” found as cloud environments become the mainstay, organizations are taking steps to move more of their operations to the cloud. According to the new data, production applications now make up 60 percent of cloud use.

The report, based on data collected between January 2012 and June 2013, looks at current cloud adoption and usage trends in the enterprise and public sector.

“The cloud is now the center of the application life cycle in the public sector; it’s the de facto deployment method,” said Norm Laudermilch, chief operations officer at Verizon Terremark public sector. “The beauty about all this is that it’s costing the government less to improve the level of modernization of apps to serve its customers.”

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The money being funneled into cloud spending monthly increased 45 percent. According to an IDC Government Insight report on federal spending on cloud technology, federal private cloud services spending will reach $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2014 and $7.7 billion by 2017.

Cloud growth in the public sector has mainly spiked because of the technology’s security flexibility and cost advantages. Back-office applications such as manufacturing and resource planning software applications now account for 23 percent of all cloud use.

“Hybrid cloud options are attractive to public sector organizations and companies subject to strict security or regulatory policies,” the report said.

Five years ago when Verizon first launched its cloud enterprise product, some agencies migrated their IT infrastructure to the cloud. That decision turned out to be advantageous for those early adopters. Laudermilch said those agencies have since reaped the benefits, saving up to 70 percent. A few agencies considered thought leaders at the time have now effectively moved their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud, he added.

Developing, testing and rolling out these services come at a much lower cost to agencies because they no longer have to build massive infrastructure to support theses operations. Now that cloud has established itself as the de facto standard for deploying applications, Laudermilch said agencies are expected to make much larger cloud investments and purchases.

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