Cloud Computing Shifts to Second Gear with Government Help

To further develop the public sector's cloud-based application service, the General Services Administration recently invited 11 new vendors to contribute to its Apps.gov portal.

• Apptis Inc. partnered with Amazon Web Services
• AT&T
• Autonomic Resources partnered with Carpathia, Enomaly, and Dell
• CGI Federal Inc.
• Computer Literacy World partnered with Electrosoft, XO Communications and Secure Networks
• Computer Technology Consultants partnered with Softlayer, Inc.
• Eyak Tech LLC
• General Dynamics Information Technology partnered with Carpathia
• Insight Public Sector partnered with Microsoft
• Savvis Federal Systems
• Verizon Federal Inc.

If you haven’t already, go check out Apps.Gov website and click on the “Cloud IT Services” section to see where these new cloud services will be populated (and therefore accessible for purchase by the aforementioned government agencies).

Why this matters.

In my opinion, this is not just another press about cloud computing services. It represents a major milestone in the development, acceptance and refinement of public cloud services. Here is why:

• The U.S. Government already spends 10s of billions of dollars per year on IT. This will allow a large and growing percentage of that spending to be driven to the public sector. That spending will not only be more efficient (resulting in a higher ROI for taxpayers) it will help fund the continued growth, development and maturity of cloud computing technologies. As the demand for public cloud services expands, so does the investment and innovation expand for public cloud technologies.
• Making IaaS services available to government agencies will help move cloud computing industry maturity from the early adopter phase to more of a mainstream phase. This should mark a turning point, not just for the government sector but for the profit driven masses of business organizations. For instance, business leaders will increasingly ask their CIOs and CTOs why they can’t take advantage of public cloud computing when the government is doing so.
• Government use of public cloud computing services will produce some outstanding, highly visible, massively beneficial success stories. These will be used by cloud service providers and vendors as proof points, further encouraging private enterprises to use public cloud computing.
• As many readers know, cloud computing is not just about cost savings. It is also about agility. Large, complex organizations are often slowed by approval processes, and we all know our friends in government agencies can always use more help with agility. This GSA milestone shows the potential agility benefits clearly. Beyond the more widely known agility benefits from cloud technology itself (driven by self-service access, rapid elasticity, avoidance of budget busting capital expenditures, and so on), the apps.gov portal will consolidate innumerable, distributed approval processes to single, pre-approved blanket purchase agreements. In this way the apps.gov portal greatly extends the agility benefits of public cloud computing services across a broader set of business processes including the always challenging procurement processes.
• Fears about security and compliance issues will also be reduced through this GSA program. “Prior to making IaaS products available through Apps.gov, vendors must complete the Certification & Accreditation (C&A) process at the FISMA Moderate Impact Data security level as administered by GSA. Once granted authority to operate, services will be made available for purchase by government entities through the Apps.gov storefront.” Expect these requirements and many other government driven security and compliance requirements to keep the pressure on technology vendors and service providers to ensure cloud computing is safe. Increased pressure and visibility here will help ensure cloud computing services are designed to meet the most stringent security and compliance requirements for public and private entities alike.

None of this is to say that public cloud computing is the silver bullet for all of IT. There are no silver bullets like that!! Still, this announcement by the GSA represents a major milestone for the cloud computing industry in general and for public cloud computing in particular.

What do you think?