The Federal government embraced cloud computing today with the launch of the GSA operated Apps.gov which promises to bring efficient cloud computing services and infrastructure to the U.S. government agencies. As noted on the Apps.gov website:
“Cloud computing plays a key role in the President’s initiative to modernize Information Technology (IT) by identifying enterprise -wide common services and solutions and adopting a new cloud-computing business model. The Federal CIO Council under the guidance of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO), Vivek Kundra, established the Cloud Computing Initiative to fulfill the President’s objectives for cloud computing.”
It also notes that cloud computing offers the following features:
- Significant Cost Reduction: Cloud computing is available at a fraction of the cost of traditional IT services, eliminating upfront capital expenditures and dramatically reducing administrative burden on IT resources.
- Increased Flexibility: Cloud computing provides on-demand computing across technologies, business solutions and large ecosystems of providers, reducing time to implement new solutions from months to days.
- Access anywhere: You are no longer tethered to a single computer or network. You can change computers or move to portable devices, and your existing applications and documents follow you through the cloud.
- Elastic scalability and pay-as-you-go: Add and subtract capacity as your needs change. Pay for only what you use.
- Easy to implement: You do not need to purchase hardware, software licenses or implementation services.
- Service quality: Cloud service providers offer reliable services, large storage and computing capacity, and 24/7 service and up-time.
- Delegate non-critical applications: Cloud computing provides a way to outsource non-critical applications to service providers, allowing agency IT resources to focus on business-critical applications.
- Always the latest software: You are no longer faced with choosing between obsolete software and high upgrade costs. When the applications are web-based, updates are automatic and are available the next time you log into the cloud.
- Sharing documents and group collaboration: Cloud computing lets you access all your applications and documents from anywhere in the world, freeing you from the confines of the desktop and facilitating group collaboration on documents and projects.
Today’s launch focused on efficiently obtaining cloud computing service from third party vendors, offering streamlined discount volume purchasing for services like Google Apps and Salesforce.com. In the near future, the site will also offer infrastructure services like virtual servers and hosting. It makes sense to offer these services through GSA given the agency’s extensive focus on bringing efficiencies to U.S. government purchasing.
The Apps.gov initiative clearly brings cloud computing to the forefront of government technology initiatives but will also highlight a wide-range of cloud computing concerns including security and reliability which have not been appropriately addressed with the Apps.gov offering.
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