New Study Finds PaaS Could Save Federal IT Departments Up to $20.5 Billion a Year

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions could translate to massive savings for the federal government. A new study from MeriTalk, a public-private partnership designed to improve government IT, finds PaaS could save the feds as much as $20.5 billion per year in IT costs, which rounds out to 25 percent of the federal IT budget.

That’s a huge chunk of change that would largely be realized by speeding up the process of software development. The new report, entitled, “PaaS or Play? Cloud’s Next Move” was underwritten by Red Hat, Inc. It finds that software development and deployment currently moves a snail’s pace, which equals higher costs for federal IT departments. PaaS enables development and deployment within a virtual environment, cutting the development cycle by 31 percent from its current average of three and a half years.

"Using PaaS can save time, and time is money," said Gunnar Hellekson, chief technology strategist, U.S. Public Sector, Red Hat. "In an era of federal budget cuts and continued belt tightening, this new way of software development and deployment represents a significant opportunity for agencies to be more agile and much more fiscally responsible."

A recent study from IDC predicts the worldwide PaaS market will hit $14 billion by 2017, driven largely by social media, mobility and real-time contextual activities. With a CAGR of nearly 30 percent over the next few years, PaaS is expected to account for more than 10 percent of overall application development and deployment revenue. IDC finds that the overall need for better and more efficient application development and deployment techniques as well as increased regulatory and compliance needs driven by healthcare reform and other factors will steer growth.

Those factors will certainly benefit the federal government, with the MeriTalk study finding that 95 percent of federal employees surveyed said their agency would benefit from the reduced costs and improved security of PaaS solutions. Only 12 percent of feds are actively using PaaS, but 71 percent are considering solutions or actively transitioning to them. Additionally, 92 percent of those queried believe PaaS offers vital support for cloud computing, while 90 percent believe it supports data center consolidation. Other factors supporting federal government IT benefits from PaaS include big data, mobile computing, taking advantage of shared services and being better able to meet core agency mission objectives.