Admin
Platform-as-a-service gives federal agencies a tool to support their initiatives on cloud computing and data center consolidation but many have not embraced PaaS due to several reasons, James Benson of HumanTouch says.
Benson, a HumanTouch senior vice president, wrote in a post for GCN published Thursday that he believes some system integrators are hindering federal adoption of PaaS despite its functions in application delivery and process agility.
Among the reasons he notes are the lack of incentives for finishing IT projects ahead of schedule and wariness to stray away from the project requirements.
Benson writes that agencies set their own procurement timelines and tend to see potential risks in expediting the process.
“Integrators have grown accustomed to receiving a list of requirements and satisfying them – never mind if the requirements were not fully vetted or thought through at the time of procurement,” he adds.
He notes that the use of lowest-price technically acceptable bids could also have contributed to this view, despite PaaS’ intention to facilitate cost reduction and faster times-to-market.
Benson also states that although PaaS cannot yet be used on “high-stakes” and “critical” projects, it can be applied to daily government functions.
