For the better part of a decade, federal agencies have been urged to move to the cloud. The Cloud First policy, issued by former federal CIO, Vivek Kundra in February 2011, identified that moving to the cloud would help agencies address inefficiencies in government service delivery and “significantly help agencies grappling with the need to provide highly reliable, innovative services quickly despite resource constraints.”

And while there have been numerous insights on how agencies can embrace the cloud adoption rates among federal agencies are not as high as would be expected. For example, not a single agency reached the OMB’s goal that 15 percent of IT spending be directed towards cloud computing services in 2016, the most recent year for which data is available.

There are some well-understood reasons for agencies’ reluctance to move to the cloud – think security and budgets. In a recent article by Brett Yesukaitis, Senior Sales Engineer at IronBrick points out the transformation process needed to move to the cloud and take advantage of the efficiencies and economies of scale. “Moving to the cloud requires an end state objective, a strategy to get there, and a commitment to see it through.”

No matter what decision an agency makes about their journey to the cloud – public cloud vs. multi-cloud, private cloud vs. hybrid cloud — what is abundantly clear in this data-driven era is that moving to the cloud is inevitable. Without being able to take advantage of the economies of cost and scale it delivers, as well as the opportunities to provide services to citizens and constituents in the field, an agency will simply be unable to deliver on the mission.

Want to learn more about cloud solutions for the federal government. There’s a wealth of knowledge here.