Federal Govt cloud computing use is exploding

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blog The Federal Government’s adoption of cloud computing technologies has been quite a slow one. Over the past half-decade, while the private sector, including sensitive industries such as banking and financial services, has been strongly adopting virtually every kind of cloud computing and software as a service platform, Canberra has almost completely ignored the new paradigm. The situation got so bad at one point in August 2012 that analyst firm Ovum labelled the Federal Government’s position as “cloud-last” when it comes to cloud computing — in other words, at that point, cloud computing was the least desirable option on the table.

However, according to an article published this week by ZDNet, the situation may be drastically changing. The site reports (we recommend you click here for the full article):

“According to John Sheridan, the government’s chief technology officer, the grand total of cloud-based procurement posted on AusTender in 2014-15 was AU$25 million. Sheridan said that at January this year, the 2015-16 total already surpassed last year’s total.”

Now this figure has to be put in context: It is both simultaneously huge and tiny. $27 million worth of cloud computing contracts might seem like a lot, when you consider that only a few years ago the Federal Government was procuring almost no cloud computing services at all. However, in the context of the Federal Government’s annual $5 billion ICT spend, it’s still a drop in the ocean.

It will be fascinating to see how the figure grows over the next few years — I would personally expect it to keep on rapidly expanding, as federal departments and agencies get increasingly comfortable with the cloud paradigm, and new and successful case studies of successful deployments emerge.