Currently, 60% of senior government IT decision-makers in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region have no interest in deploying any sort of cloud computing in their organisations.
In addition, less than 20% feel they have a strong understanding of cloud computing terminology.
This is according to recent IDC Government Insights research.
“The MEA public sector agencies still need to further explore their business requirements and build a cloud services model specifically suited to their regions,” says Mukesh Chulani, IDC Government Insights' research manager for MEA and Turkey.
Eighty-five percent of these decision-makers believe cloud computing is an immature, developing technology, despite 74% acknowledging its ability to offer tangible and significant benefits.
Security is the primary government concern regarding cloud adoption; the survey found there is a perception that cloud is not suited to the government sector.
“Security concerns constitute the greatest deterrent to cloud adoption at present. As government organisations are the key custodians of citizens' information, use of the cloud could expose them to significant risk, with potentially grave liability consequences. This is a risk factor that is greatly hampering adoption in the region,” says Chulani.
The survey also revealed widespread concerns about cost and bandwidth, with 72% of participants agreeing, while uncertainty about specific cloud providers also factored in.
Chulani urges vendors to overcome these concerns by educating internal stakeholders about cloud computing. "Government organisations in the MEA region are simply unaware of how to best take advantage of the cloud delivery model. The technology is disruptive, buyers are sceptical, and hype abounds," he says.
The research further revealed concerns relating to the ability of cloud to integrate with existing systems.
"IT decision-makers must help bolster awareness within their organisations by providing educational tools, models and success stories. An inventory of government organisations' current IT environments would also provide a good indication of whether existing systems contain sensitive or mission-critical data and which workloads are most suitable for migration to the cloud, thus providing an excellent base from which to plan for the cloud."
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