The independent technology analyst firm, Ovum, claims that next year will be the year that governments turn to cloud computing and data analytics, as well as ‘agile development’ to respond to times of austerity.
Ovum research director and co-author of the report, Dr Steve Hodgkinson, says “cloud computing is maturing as a revolutionary step change in the way computing can be sourced and managed,” and he says governments need to look “beyond the hype and see the reality of both the opportunities and risks of cloud computing” and factor these into both their industry development policies and their internal IT strategies.
The report also finds that other key government technology trends in 2012 will include an “explosion of interest in data analytics.” Analyst and co-author of the Ovum report, Nishant Shah, says that governments are increasingly in competition with many different stakeholders to determine the facts upon which policy decisions should be based, and he adds, “citizens increasingly expect their government agencies to have access to authoritative and accurate data.”
“This means that agencies need to be planning and implementing strategies to enhance their approach to business intelligence and their ability to analyze and report on an increasing range of data sources from both inside and outside the core systems of government,” Shah suggests.
Ovum also found that many governments will embrace what it calls ‘agile development’ in 2012, after becoming increasingly frustrated with the high costs and disappointing success rates of large IT projects.
Agile development approaches focus on early and continuous delivery of useful software that is refined over time to meet agency requirements, and Ovum says the crisis of confidence of governments in IT is being exacerbated by conditions of fiscal austerity.
Analyst and report co-author, Jessica Hawkins, says that “tightening of budgets makes it all the more important that IT projects both cost less to implement and actually deliver as promised, on time and on budget. In this context, there is increasing enthusiasm for more agile approaches to systems development and applications lifecycle management (ALM).”
Ovum advocates a cautious approach to shared services and notes the emergence of cloud computing as an alternative path. “Ovum believes that there will be major failures in the shared services space in 2012 to add to those seen in Australia and the UK over the past few years, “ Hodgkinson warns.
Hodgkinson says the secret for success will be for shared services to focus on IT infrastructure and commodity applications. “Coincidentally, this is also the ‘sweet spot’ for the success of cloud computing, which is why the cloud is becoming both an alternative to traditional shared services and a way to reduce risk and cost as a component of a shared services project.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Peter Dinham
Quelle/Source: iTWire, 04.11.2011
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