Adoption of cloud solutions among government organisations is relatively low in Qatar, an official report show.
In 2015, 18% of government entities in Qatar are using cloud solutions, according to the IT executives surveyed, said the Ministry of Transport and Communications in its report ‘Qatar’s ICT Landscape 2015’.
Among current users, IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and storage as a service (STaaS) are popular service models.
Separately, private cloud is the most popular cloud deployment model in government organisations.
When asked whether government organisations are willing to subscribe to a cloud service offered by either a local provider or the government, approximately 44% of organisations responded negatively. Still, the majority of organisations are willing to opt for cloud offers.
Twenty-nine percent of those organisations are willing to subscribe to a cloud service from the government cloud, 20% said they would be willing to subscribe from both the government cloud and local providers, and 7% said they would only be willing to subscribe to a cloud service from local providers.
When asked about the reasons for not subscribing to cloud services, IT executives shared their reasons— with major concerns around security (65%), including data location, uncertainty on the supplier’s data center information assurance practices, and risk of cyber-attacks; and the lack of suitable offerings from local providers, cited by 15% of the respondents.
While cloud computing does have its inherent risks, 64% of IT executives in government organisations also agreed that they are not fully aware of the laws and regulations in Qatar relating to cloud services and the hosting of data outside the country’s borders.
In fact, government IT executives noted that they are not fully clear about which cloud solutions they can use and which policies govern the use of public cloud solutions, the report said.