I hope all my readers had an enjoyable holiday, and are gearing up for the New Year. 2010 has been a big year of progress towards the government cloud, so I thought a retrospective post highlighting the progress was very much in order.
When I launched this blog I warned readers my “head was in the clouds,” and I’m happy to report that condition seems to finally be catching on in government. Back in late August, the GAO called government cloud adoption “inevitable” when implemented correctly. This fall the momentum continued, with the GSA approving 11 companies for a BPA to offer cloud services to government agencies via the Apps.gov portal site.
Right around Thanksgiving, the Administration asked agencies to officially codify a new approach to IT challenges. Whenever a new IT project is deemed necessary, agencies should take a “cloud first” mentality to getting the job done. This should result in much greater efficiencies and a lot of taxpayer money saved.
Now let me make clear that while I’m very jazzed about the government cloud, I’m not blind to the objections and obstacles to adoption. To call out two specific examples — I’ve blogged about how to maintain total control of your data while moving to the cloud, and I’ve talked about the need to improve security accreditation. FedRAMP is a great start, but it needs to be improved before security certification stops being a major roadblock to cloud adoption.
Overall however, I think you’d have to say that the forecast for government cloud adoption in 2011 is partly sunny and improving. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!) Best wishes for a happy new year!
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | 2010 and cloud, 2010 and federal cloud, FEDRAMP, GAO and cloud computing, Government cloud
