Rising cloud investments in the U.S. public sector have led organizations to look more closely at their cloud use and the growing number of services available to the sector, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
The 2023 ISG Provider Lens™ Multi Public Cloud Services report for the U.S. public sector finds that public cloud adoption is still rising among state, local and educational (SLED) organizations, many of which moved to the cloud to support remote work and digital constituent services when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. New, pandemic-related federal grants and loans have not yet caused a massive spending boom, because close scrutiny of cloud investments, changing regulations and other factors led many organizations to slow down their efforts, ISG says. However, the SLED market for cloud-related services has grown significantly, and more providers have entered the market.
“There is still widespread public-sector interest in the cloud,” said Nathan Frey, partner and lead, ISG Public Sector, in the U.S. “Service providers are stepping up to meet the demand, so organizations have more choice.”
Many SLED agencies are likely to progress from early cloud deployments to cloud-first environments soon, and cloud adoption in the sector eventually will be even broader than first forecast, ISG says. The need to do more with smaller budgets, while facing staff shortages and the end of life for legacy IT systems, will force more public organizations to the cloud.