Five tips for cracking the government cloud computing market

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Todd Plett.

It seems everywhere we turn there is another article espousing the value of cloud technology. Many federal, state and local agencies are publicly taking a "cloud first" strategy to new technology procurement, migrating their internal IT systems to cloud providers and creating public-private partnerships around new cloud-based applications. As technology advances and government budgets tighten, the market can expect to see more of these types of partnerships.

While partnerships between private companies and the public sector are not new, there is a new opportunity especially ripe for cloud providers that are willing to invest the dollars to work with public organizations and foster innovation. As with most vertical markets, however, partnering with government agencies requires providers to take a collaborative approach to truly understand the unique conditions and needs of these customers. Here are five tips, based on what we have learned from working with the public sector, for cloud providers looking to crack the government cloud computing market:..

1. Focus on centralized services

Many traditionally local services are moving toward more centralized offerings. The cloud enables an economy of scale for applications that normally have to be deployed and maintained locally. New technology has enabled consolidation and sharing of hosted infrastructure, driving both technical and business process changes throughout the industry. Cloud providers need to understand the holistic effects of this migration to a more centralized approach in each of the procurement, support and provisioning processes for services such as these…

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