"Cloud first" raises expectations of innovation

Ovum's public sector research director for technology Dr. Steve Hodgkinson discusses New Zealand’s announcement of a “cloud-first” policy with Australia’s more conservative “cloud-neutral” stance.

Our view was that Australia’s policy was, in practice, “cloud last”, because the policy focused too much on the risks and issues of cloud procurement and was inhibiting agency uptake of cloud services.

But in truth, Australia’s stance is perhaps better characterized as “cloud when we, and it, are ready.” This seems sensible enough, from the point of view of incremental procurement process reform.

However, it still begs the question: Does “cloud when we, and it, are ready” show sufficient leadership of ICT reform?

Some of our client executives and CIOs raised concerns that a “cloud-first” stance can lead to counter-productive, overly simplistic thinking and activity. If cloud services are seen as a silver bullet, the result will be disappointment resulting from unrealistic expectations and a burst of poorly planned, insecure, non-integrated initiatives driven by vendor hype.

The argument is that this will lead to an over-reaction against the cloud model that will, in the end, damage the momentum of enthusiasm for cloud services adoption. Perhaps it is a case of “the tortoise and the hare”; their view is that “slow and steady” might be the better race tactic.

U.S. Government Accountability Office report

One point of evidence is provided by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), in a report published in June 2012 which assessed the results of the 2010 “Cloud First” strategy in seven U.S. government agencies. The GAO noted that: “Agencies have incorporated cloud solutions into their IT and investment management policies and processes, and implemented one or more services in a cloud environment by December 2011.”

All seven agencies plan to achieve the target of three services in the cloud by the end of 2013. The GAO found that agencies had faced many challenges in transitioning to the new model, but that guidance work by the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) and other central policy agencies was proving increasingly helpful.

They also noted that future cloud computing efforts should feature more rigorous planning and cost/benefit analysis to ensure realization of the benefits of migration from legacy environments.

Overall, the GAO’s scorecard was quite positive about the implementation of its strategy. It appeared that the strategy was effective in stimulating a focused burst of organisational learning that had accelerated innovation in ICT procurement and project management. Certainly, the US government, and also the US ICT industry, would not be as far ahead in its “cloud thinking” and cloud capabilities without the strategy’s stimulation of hands-on activity and demand for cloud solutions.

Ovum's view

On balance, Ovum’s view is that a pro-cloud-services policy is a positive step for many governments, even though, when taken literally, it can seem a bit odd to bias procurement toward one particular sourcing model.

The argument that some of the activity under the US government’s “Cloud First” strategy was perhaps a little inefficient or could have been better planned misses the point that these criticisms can equally be applied to many other ICT strategies, and that it was strategically necessary to bring about a more active step-change in the ICT reform agenda. Vivek Kundra was exercising leadership with a capital “L” when he used the “Cloud First” strategy to kick the hornet’s nest of government ICT procurement.

In essence, the value of “cloud first” is that it authorizes, and even requires, agency executives to look beyond the constraints of the current approach to ICT procurement and to ask the question: “Is there a better, more agile way to use ICT to achieve our policy and service delivery outcomes?”

The value of “cloud first,” however, is only apparent if one first opens one’s eyes to the reality of the challenges in the status quo, and the fact that we really do need to accelerate the introduction of a fresh approach to ICT in government.