Should your agency move data or applications to the private or public cloud? But those aren’t the only options. Other choices include a community cloud, a multi-tenant infrastructure that is shared among several organizations from a specific group with common computing concerns. Then there’s the hybrid cloud which composes two or more of the above (private, public or community).

There’s lots of talk these days about how government technology innovation is being held back by legacy environments, so it’s refreshing to hear that cloud adoption by government agencies is set to “skyrocket”. That’s according to a new report by Forbes Insights.

At DLT Solutions, we are seeing a pattern emerge with the types of workloads being deployed to public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms by our customers. DLT primarily engages the Public Sector and Educational entities, so the relevance of our observed trends rests there.

Cloud security has always been a concern among government IT and business leaders.

According to a recent survey by the Society of Information Technology Management, 47% of public sector IT professionals surveyed would not use the cloud for IT services involving personal data or business-critical functions. (Source: Computer Weekly).

State CIOs can no longer afford to stay in the infrastructure business and are now aggressively pursuing cloud-based services. That was the resounding message from state CIOs at the NASCIO Mid-Year Conference in April.

We all suspected that the heavy presence of legacy technology was holding government back from truly digitizing their operations, but now data confirms it. A new report by Gartner – the 2015 CIO Agenda – which surveyed over 2,800 businesses worldwide and includes responses from 343 government CIOs finds that legacy modernization is problematic:

The rush to embrace cloud tools and services in the government is just a means to an end – it’s about experimentation and innovation and understanding the potential of what cloud can do. That’s according to Gunnar Hellekson, chief strategist for Red Hat U.S. Public Sector.

In a recent interview with American City and County, Hellekson explained:

At DLT we’re very bullish about cloud technology in the public sector, and I spend much of my time talking with folks about the different cloud technologies and the best way to leverage these tools in support of their missions. Most of the people with whom I’ve spoken have a pretty good grasp of IaaS and SaaS and if they aren’t already using these technologies, they are exploring them.

Keeping pace with changes in enterprise-level technology is no easy feat. For education institutions and universities, in particular, making sense of the available options for managing complex operational and technological infrastructures can be mind-boggling.

The importance of cloud computing in this mix can’t be underestimated. Today, nearly 70% of higher education institutions in North America have moved or are moving systems to the cloud, while 50% have adopted cloud-based collaboration systems.

FedRAMP (The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is changing. By the end of 2015, FedRAMP, aka the FISMA for the cloud, is anticipated to add high-impact cloud systems (it currently only authorizes low- and moderate-impact levels).

While only 12% of all federal systems are labeled as high impact (mostly DoD and DHS), as more agencies move to use cloud services, the need for a high-impact baseline standard is growing.

The Need for Clarity about FedRAMP Processes