Uncle Sam is on the Cloud
A few months back, I blogged about the rising trend of adoption of App Store within the Enterprise and predicted that we will be seeing more and more of such implementations in the near future. In one of the most significant triumphs for the Cloud Computing paradigm, the App Store of one the largest Enterprises in the world has been updated to provide Cloud Computing services to its customers.
Apps.Gov (https://www.apps.gov) was one of the first of its kind government App Store implemented by the US Federal Govt. The site currently hosts a limited number of apps neatly categorized into Business, Productivity and Social Media. According to the FAQ section, billing for these services is typically monthly and based upon the usage.
In the last few days, there has been a small but significant addition on the portal to officially start offering "Cloud IT Infrastructure" to its consumers. Federal agencies now can order from a menu of three Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings--cloud storage, virtual machines and Web hosting--from service providers that have received GSA authorities to operate (ATOs) to offer them.
Understandably, this process has been delayed for quite some time due to the complex process of assessing the various vendors and issuing "Authorities To Operate" or ATOs as they are called, but the portal has finally been updated to provide detailed information on each service and the list of vendors providing them, in addition to stepping agencies through the ordering process.
Cloud Computing enthusiasts around the world may consider this event as the most significant endorsement of the paradigm in the past few years. Given the recent Oracle debacles and the Sony PSN hacking attacks, there were some concerns being raised around the overall security aspects of the Cloud, and this approval from the US Govt. does provide fodder to allay those fears around this and the fact that the technology has matured significantly.
However, the two biggest challenges that the adoption of these new services are of course not related to technology at all, and its going to be very interesting to see how those aspects play out. For once, adoption of I-a-a-S solutions will free up bandwidth within the current IT management teams and there might be some difficult decisions to be taken regarding the future of those employees. Secondly, given the relatively high resistance to change in typical government setups, the decision to actually make the jump to this new platform may take time. The GovCloud Services Assessment is a service being provided by the team to help interested agencies in evaluating and creating a cloud service strategy.
According to the official blog hosted on the site, "Twenty five major Federal Agencies have identified 78 systems and services which will be moved to Cloud delivery this year, according to a document released May 25 by the Office of Management and Budget."
Incidentally, the GovCloud platform has been developed by Google for the government and hosts a version of the commercial Google Apps suite -- which includes hosted e-mail, word processing, collaboration and Web site creation services -- that's tailored to meet specific public-sector requirements.
Further Reading
Forbes Article on this : http://blogs.forbes.com/kevinjackson/2011/07/03/govcloud-iaas-open-for-business/
GovCloud Blog : http://blog.govcloud.com/post/78-systems-across-25-Federal-Agencies-to-move-to-Cloud-Delivery.aspx
