10 Signs That Government / Federal Cloud is Growing
When the U. S. Office of Management and Budget took action about 18 months ago with initiatives to move forward with cloud technology, hundreds of federal data centers were closed under the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative.
Here are 10 recent developments that hold long-term implications for the federal cloud:
1. FedRAMP, a federal program to certify cloud security, opened for business. Agencies can now piggyback on the work done by other agencies to ensure that cloud services comply with more than two dozen laws.
2. Agencies have begun pursuing single-source, no-bid cloud contacts.
3. Agencies are using the cloud to provide better security. Security, of course, is the No. 1 concern about cloud computing, so it’s remarkable that agencies are defying conventional wisdom in this way.
4. Enterprise-wide “foundation” cloud services are emerging. The Department of Interior this month issued an RFP that goes well beyond the email-as-a-service RFPs that have been the cloud entry point for many agencies.
5. Intelligence agencies plan to begin tapping into the public cloud. Intelligence agencies have reached a level of trust in the public cloud, and IT architecture is enabling yet another way to tap into the cloud.
6. The cloud is promising leap-ahead IT capabilities to agencies that are far behind the pack. The Department of Labor’s email system, used by 22,000 employees will be coming into the modern age with cloud technology.
7. The community cloud, once a concept, is becoming a reality. A year ago, Los Alamos National Lab began offering infrastructure-as-a-service from its data center.
8. The cloud is saving energy. In theory, cloud services are more efficient than do-it-yourself data centers, and a new report shows GSA’s per-user energy consumption dropped 89%, from 175kWh/user to 20kWh/user.
9. Two former NASA technologists launched competing cloud startups, hoping that NASA will find another way to capitalize on its own innovation.
10. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released an 81-page guide, written to be easily read and used, which provides an overview of clouds models (private, public, hybrid, community) and discusses the benefits of and concerns about software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, and platform-as-a-service.
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