Budget, network limitations impacting government’s ability to deliver digital services: Survey

A federal IT survey revealed that less than 15 percent feel their agency’s current network infrastructure will be able to fully support the solutions necessary to deliver world-class digital services for government.

The survey, commissioned by Brocade and conducted by Market Connections study polled 200 IT decision makers across 64 federal agencies, found that 90 percent of respondents believed open standards are important and although almost half (47 percent) are considering or planning to adopt them in the next few years, only 11 percent have made the transition.

Security concerns were the commonly cited reason for not considering open standards.

Seventy percent of respondents are considering, planning or have already moved to software-defined networking (SDN), citing performance and ease of management as major advantages.

Eighty-eight percent of respondents have deployed virtualised services on the network including firewalls, load balancers and routers.

Budget constraints (more than 55 percent) and limited internal resources and expertise (more than 40 percent) are top challenges agencies face to improving the network’s simplicity, agility and scalability.

“Networks based on traditional IP technologies limit an agency’s ability to take advantage of the incredible innovations that are happening in IT, an evolution that IDC calls the 3rd Platform,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure at IDC.  “These advancements can enable dramatic improvements to the way agencies can securely deliver digital services to citizens, military personnel, government employees and veterans.”

The survey shows federal agencies are making progress on their path to network modernisation through implementations of SDN and virtualised services.  However, a significant gap remains in the adoption of open standards.