Australia lagging in government Cloud adoption: Ovum

Australia lags behind the rest of the world in government Cloud adoption, according to analyst firm, Ovum.

Speaking at Ovum’s Staying ahead of the IT game in 2011 breakfast in Sydney, analyst Kevin Noonan said both state and federal governments are failing to adopt Cloud because of security fears.

“In reality, Australia is lagging in Cloud implementation... the US government [agencies] have been moving into this area,” Noonan said. “Security is one of the big issues that keeps being brought up as a concern with Cloud computing.”

Noonan said Cloud options were among the first technologies considered by US government agencies, but Australia remains apprehensive.

“When we’re focusing on Cloud computing, we’re only talking about the problems — there are good things,” he said. “…Cloud is to be considered first before other options in the US...it won’t always be chosen, but Cloud needs to be considered first rather than last.”

One reason for the lack of Australian commitment could be the shortage of domestic data centre providers. Although this is chaning, Noonan said offshoring is still frowned upon in many agencies.

“One of the big concerns in Australia has been data sovereignty,” he said. “We are starting to see in Australia that there are a number of different companies who can offer hosting in Australia.”

Government CIOs must reconsider their definition of Gov 2.0 if Cloud adoption rates are to change, he concluded.

“Think about Gov 2.0 as delivering on real problems rather than putting information out there.”

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