The federal government saved nearly $5.5 billion a year by moving to cloud services. But it might have saved up to $12 billion if cloud strategies were more aggressive, a survey of federal IT managers found.
The study, drawn from interviews with 108 federal CIOs and IT managers, was published by MeriTalk Cloud Computing Exchange, a community of federal government leaders focused on public-private collaboration in Washington, D.C.
The IT managers surveyed also reported spending 11 percent of their current, fiscal year 2013 budgets, or $8.7 billion, on cloud computing.
The chief impediment to implementing cloud services was security, listed by 85 percent of federal IT managers. Also of concern were agency culture, named by 38 percent of managers, and service levels, listed by 32 percent of managers.