Municipalities Are Moving to Hybrid Cloud Environments

Over 67% of public sector IT professionals expect to be operating in a multi-cloud environment within one to three years, according to the Fourth Annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) based on a survey conducted by VansonBourne. We got a preview of this study which surveyed 491 global public sector IT professionals, including local, state, and federal levels, as well as public education, on their cloud deployment and planning trends.

The study compares public sector and sub-sector cloud plans, priorities, and experiences to each other, as well as to other industries and the global response base overall. The study indicates that while the adoption of multiple clouds, private or public, is underway across the

globe, public sector organizations appear further along in their multi-cloud journeys than average.

Seventy-five percent of respondents said that hybrid multi-cloud environments are ideal for them. The following are some of the study’s conclusions.

• More public sector organizations have adopted multi-cloud as a primary IT operating model. Public education reported the largest usage among all global ECI respondents, with penetration nearly twice the global average.
• The global public education sub-sector also reported the greatest public cloud usage and platform diversity.
• Fewer public sector organizations said they had moved an application to a different IT infrastructure in the previous year. Those that did most often cited getting better control of the app(s) as a motivator, while the main application mobility driver globally was to improve security.
• While security persists as a universal multi-cloud management challenge, those in the public sector frequently cited other factors, including integrating data across clouds, application mobility, and internal management silos, as problematic.
• When adopting a cloud-smart approach to workload optimization the global public sector indicated that public cloud was its preferred infrastructure for running typical run-the-business applications.

Why is the public sector ahead on these trends? Though cloud infrastructure is not new, advances in hybrid cloud environments deliver multiple benefits. The ECI survey respondents responded with their take:

• Faster Application Development – 46%   
• Improved Security and Compliance – 44%
• Gain better control over their applications – 34%

Other surveys have found that the ability to decrease IT costs by as much as 60% and improve data integration across environments as other key factors.

To read the complete 2022 study, click here. To download the full 2021 report, click here.

For more information on hybrid cloud environments, talk to your Flagship representative or fill out the form below.