Back in September of 2009 the Obama Administration announced a far reaching and long term goal endorsing cloud computing as a way to shave substantial dollars from the US Governments 76 billion dollar IT budget. While some may argue shaving a few billion off of a 76 billion dollar bill doesn’t move the needle too much given our present deficits, I say hey every billion helps. But seriously, more importantly the administration’s endorsement of cloud computing as a more efficient means was an important milestone in the legitimacy of cloud computing.
Of course with the “security concerns” and other issues, it was left rather vague as to what shape this government cloud computing initiative would take. Would it be a “gov cloud” owned and operated exclusively by the government? Could a cloud run by a government be a “private cloud”. Would they use a commercial cloud provider? There were lots of questions to be sure.
The General Services Administration than put out a request for cloud computing services which was due last week. Several cloud providers I know have responded. The idea is that the GSA will pre-bid the cloud services so that federal agencies can than select and deploy cloud based data and apps “on the fly” at pre-determined rates and feature sets. The approved cloud providers to the government are scheduled to be announced in September. This could be a pivotal moment in the shift to the cloud.
With a entity such as the US Government is lined up behind it, the naysayers on cloud computing will have a harder time being taken seriously. However, just because the GSA awards cloud providers contracts, does not mean that Federal agencies will actually deploy in the cloud. The same old nagging concerns around security and privacy could still hinder cloud adoption.
To overcome this resistance the GSA has come up with Fedramp — short for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. As part of the program they will form a “Joint Authorization Board” made up of members of the DoD, Homeland Security and the GSA among others. The board will physically inspect cloud computing providers for security, privacy and other concerns. Once a provider is approved, individual agencies will not have to duplicate this due diligence and should have a higher level of confidence in the services provided.
Of course we will have to wait and see if the individual federal agencies buy into this. But make no mistake, the Federal Government is clearly lining up behind the cloud. They are going to hit the security question head on. This is a huge endorsement of cloud computing. I would expect that this will accelerate adoption in the private sector as well.
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