Historically, government entities have been perceived as slow-moving behemoths, lagging well behind the fast-paced private sector technology trends. The explosion of cloud computing has changed all of that. The technology powering government agencies is advancing just as quickly as the private sector counterparts, according to Jeff McAllister, vice president of sales, Americas, at Druva Inc.

“One thing that has been very impressive in the public sector is that the interval in product innovation would come to the public sector a year to two years behind what we saw in the commercial marketplace — that time and space is shrinking down to absolutely nothing,” McAllister said.

John Furrier (@furrier) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, interviewed McAllister at this year’s AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. about the latest trends in government technology. (* Disclosure below.)

As a Service business model enables new growth for government agencies

The “as a service” business model government agencies are becoming accustomed to are the key to changing the way governments consume technology, which historically has been large-scale licensing deals.

“You are bringing that elasticity of demand, so they are able to embrace the idea that, ‘I only pay for the services that I actually consume.’ … Not only does it become easy to manage technologically, but from a budget standpoint it makes it a very predictable cost,” McAllister said.

The more flexible buying model not only shortens time to market but also drives providers to innovate and provide more value at shorter intervals in order to keep the business, because it becomes easier for competitors to steal a business socket.

“The biggest thing that people have come to embrace is that the innovation that takes place in the cloud comes to market so much faster … being able to consistently, quarter in quarter out, deliver that additional feature set and additional value at no additional cost to our customers,” McAllister concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit. (* Disclosure: Druva Inc. sponsored this AWS Public Sector Summit segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Druva nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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