Public sector organisations are considerably less enthusiastic about the cloud than the private sector, with implementation suffering from a lack of senior support, according to new research.

A survey by cloud services provider Redcentric found that only 31% of public bodies support moving operations to the cloud, compared to 48% in private firms.

Public sector respondents say their cloud projects are most likely to be delayed by a lack of senior level support (40%), staff shortages and cost-cuts (both 33%) and insufficient project management.

Andy Mills, group sales director at Redcentric said: “It is vital that IT departments engage the wider organisation at the start of their cloud journey to reduce the disconnect that we’ve observed between IT and service owners. This can often lead to costly delays.”

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The research also found that 58% of public sector respondents admitted to departing from agreed strategy during the deployment of cloud, with 19% cancelling projects.

Although the biggest driver for cloud adoption is cost-cutting, many public sector bodies are halting or altering projects in order to save money, according to the research.

Mills said: “This shows that despite much of the public sector moving to the cloud to reduce costs, further cost-cutting actually halts the cloud journey, showing that the sector’s frugality could in fact work as a cloud hindrance.”

Off the shelf solutions were most often the first cloud projects adopted by public bodies, whereas most private sector firms preferred tailor-made solutions.

In addition, a “pick and mix” approach was the most popular solution for public sector bodies, cherry picking some services to move to the cloud, rather than their entire ICT estate.