Cloud computing offers agencies efficiency

Since taking office, the Obama administration has pushed the federal government to improve efficiency in its information research systems and provide citizens with greater transparency through innovation. Federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra continues to promote virtualization and consolidation of data centers and operations, and ultimately shifting government IT to a cloud-computing business model. This has led agencies to identify projects and IT operations that can benefit from moving to the cloud.

With agencies having traditionally deployed and managed their own IT infrastructure, most intra-agency information was constrained by security and compliance concerns. Cloud computing represents a fundamental change in managing and delivering information. By enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction, cloud computing offers marked advantages to agencies seeking to meet open government requirements and make more effective, collaborative use of their data.

Cloud computing revolutionizes infrastructure cost and scalability decisions. Agencies don't have to gain approval for large capital expenditures, and can avoid the costs of hardware, software, salaries for specialized IT resources, training and ongoing support. Cloud computing as well enables granular scalability, scaling up and down as needed to deliver guaranteed resources on demand.

Today, there is no better model than the cloud to help organizations improve IT efficiencies, reduce operating costs and ensure data security at a minimum risk. To be successful, even though, it is critical for both the cloud computing service providers and government users to understand the drivers and challenges in federal, state and local government market, identify the areas that cloud computing can bring the most IT efficiencies, and raise awareness and trust in the model.