New FedScoop study reveals shift in agencies IT investment spending over next two years

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A new survey sheds light for the first time on how agencies' IT investment strategies impact their ability to modernize IT infrastructure and applications.

Of the federal IT executives surveyed, 3 in 4 expect their agencies to shift IT investment portfolios over the next two years, signaling that a significant swing in IT investment planning is underway.

Agencies are backing away from investing in on-site, government-run data centers and are planning to reallocate more of their investments toward a combination of models, including government-only community clouds, hybrid or multi-clouds and to commercial clouds, the study found.

Those investment decisions play a significant role in determining how well agencies are embracing modern technology tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to the study, which was produced by FedScoop and underwritten by IBM.

The study found that agencies which invest more heavily in government community clouds and hybrid or multi-cloud models are significantly more likely to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to support agency objectives, compared to agencies that invest predominantly in on-site, government-run data centers.

Among executives whose agencies currently use or plan to use artificial intelligence technologies, 54 percent invest primarily in government community clouds, commercial or hybrid/multi-cloud models, the study found. In contrast, among those at agencies not using or not planning to use AI, 68 percent invest mostly in on-site or outsourced data centers.

Agencies that are investing more heavily in hybrid or multi-cloud models also are further along in developing and deploying virtualized software application containers and microservices which are considered instrumental in speeding up application development and helping agencies modernize their legacy applications.

Notably, 63 percent of agency executives that invest predominantly in a hybrid or multi-cloud model said their agency is operating at stages 4, 5, or 6 of Gartner's 6-stage cloud adoption maturity framework; in contrast to just 34 percent of those at agencies investing primarily in their own on-site data centers.

The findings are based on a survey of 169 pre-qualified federal agency IT and program management executives.

FedScoop is the leading tech media brand in the federal government market.

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SOURCE FedScoop