Feds begin race to the cloud

Tasked with adopting cloud computing as a first option in all IT projects, federal agencies are now grappling with the hard realities of making the policy work.

Contributing writer, Computerworld |

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Moreover, at the time of the survey, only 17% of federal CIOs were using infrastructure as a service, 15% were using software as a service, and 13% were using platform as a service, according to MeriTalk. However, 20% said they were planning to move to infrastructure as a service, 22% were planning to start using software as a service, and 19% said they had a platform-as-a-service project in the works.

Support for the government's cloud initiative continues even though Kundra announced that in August he will leave the federal CIO post he has held since 2009 to take a fellowship at Harvard University.

"Vivek is the visionary guy, but the next step now is really around policy and governance," says Morgenthal. "These are less visionary and more detail-oriented, so in certain regards it's good timing, so whoever comes in next can be more structured and eliminate those hurdles."

Kingsberry says he thinks the government should act faster.

"Federal still doesn't move at the pace that it can. There's risk aversion throughout it. And because of that, there isn't going to be this massive move," he says. "But this is a journey, and there are steps. There will be stop points, and right now this is one of the stop points. The next step is for federal as a whole to embrace and understand the performance characteristics for actually making this move."

But Rosen says the move to cloud computing shouldn't be thought of as a race.

"My approach is, let's start with something simple, something we can encapsulate, and start with that and then move that into the cloud," he says, noting that IT grew wary of megaprojects for a good reason -- in the past, they often led to big failures. "I'm trying to do [cloud computing] in ways so we don't make mistakes and waste a lot of money, and if we find it doesn't work we can back out."

Perhaps, then, despite all of the hype around the benefits of cloud computing, the migration of federal IT to the cloud won't be an all-out sprint so much as a well-paced marathon.

Classified Data? Not in the Cloud

IT leaders are constantly weighing cloud computing's benefits against its security risks.

In its spring survey of 375 federal, state and local government IT decision-makers and influencers, CompTIA found that 44% of cloud implementers rated network security as a top challenge. Thirty-six percent listed compliance with security mandates as a top challenge, while 35% cited data loss prevention and 35% pointed to hardware security.

Tim Herbert, vice president of research at CompTIA, says CIOs are concerned about keeping data and systems safe from malicious attacks and establishing data governance procedures in an environment that encourages collaboration and sharing.

"It comes up a lot -- security and policies. And it comes up in the private sector, too," he says. "Some of that concern is reality, and some of it is perception."

At the very least, analysts say, those security concerns will keep classified data out of the cloud for the time being even as the General Services Administration and other agencies establish security standards. And it will likely limit to some degree the amount of less-sensitive data that migrates to the cloud as well.

— Mary K. Pratt

Next: Why Missile Defense Agency's CIO is sold on the cloud

Pratt is a Computerworld contributing writer in Waltham, Mass. Contact her at marykpratt@verizon.net.

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