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Cloud Computing: Federal Agencies Hesitant but Ready
Despite worries about data security and longevity, Federal agencies are increasingly thinking about the adoption of cloud computing. At the March FOSE 2010 IT trade show, about a third of the attendees said that they have Cloud Computing on their list of items that they’re investigating this year. 58 percent of the respondents said that cloud computing is very important to their agencies, up from 41 percent in 2009. The survey was conducted by ScienceLogic.
Chief Federal Information Officer Vivek Kundra has been promoting the use of Cloud Computing as a way for government to cut costs. Kundra had sent a memo out in February asking agencies to come up with their plans before the end of June to consolidate their data centers. Some of Kundra’s enthusiasm is being picked up by federal agencies, but adoption is still low. Just 7 percent of agencies have tried moving any of their data to the cloud.
Because of security concerns, most agencies are thinking about private clouds rather than public ones. So rather than pushing their data onto a system based on Amazon, Google, Salesforce or others, the idea is to create a private cloud infrastructure using their own resources.
But rather than the current thinking of building out many private clouds, one per agency, it might make good sense for groups of federal agencies to band together to create a common cloud infrastructure that could be shared among themselves. In any event, agencies are considering cloud computing very carefully. At the pace of government, many think that it might take 10 to 15 years before their infrastructure can be modernized, but the Obama administration is pushing the agenda forward.
