Cost Savings Draw Governments Worldwide to the Cloud

Cost savings are the biggest driver to cloud computing for national, state and local governments and security concerns are the greatest barrier, a survey released Tuesday found.

About one-fourth of respondents said their government division would have to realize information technology savings of up to 10 percent to make a cloud transition worthwhile and another 20 percent said they would have to shave as much as one-fourth off their IT budgets to justify the move, according to the survey by KPMG, a global auditing firm, and Forbes Insights, a research branch of the business publishing company.

Another 10 percent of respondents said they would have to save more than 25 percent of their IT costs to make the move worthwhile. About half of government respondents said they expected to save some money from a cloud transition, but only about one-fourth thought it would fundamentally change their operating model, according to the survey.