Considering the sweeping changes that cloud computing has already had on enterprise IT — where it’s increasingly seen by CIOs as a way to cut costs and improve data center flexibility and manageability — it should come as no surprise that the federal government is investigating ways to leverage the same model.
But nothing in Washington is ever done quickly, and that includes implementing a federal cloud computing strategy. The program involves making it secure while extending it beyond Washington to education, research and private industry, and there are a whole slew of federal agencies involved. Datamation looks at the latest activities around building a federal cloud.
WASHINGTON — It may be a slow process, but the federal migration of government IT systems to the cloud is building steam, a panel of senior government officials said Wednesday here at the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington think tank.
They described a thicket of issues impeding the shift to the cloud, particularly concerns over the security and privacy of sensitive data, as well as the cultural reluctance on the part of some CIOs and managers to embrace a technology they continue to view as longer on hype than promise.