Amazon.com has targeted its cloud computing business at web startups, large companies, and scientists. But the Seattle online retailer has also been eyeing another potential customer for its cloud: government. The company is quietly building an operation in the Washington, D.C. area, and is aiming to become a key technology provider to federal and state governments and the U.S. military.

The Obama administration’s growing interest in cloud computing, and the sheer size of government, make it a compelling market. The federal government market for cloud services is projected to grow to $800 million by 2013, and the state and local cloud market is expected to reach $635 million by that year, according to Input, a government contracting research firm based in Reston, Va.

Of course, Amazon faces competition from a variety of technology companies including Google, Salesforce.com, and IBM for government cloud business. Governments themselves are notoriously slow adopters of new technology, and have stringent security and regulatory requirements for their data, which may be a barrier to moving services into the cloud.

But Amazon is clearly positioning itself to work with governments. The online retailer has set up an initiative called “Amazon Government Solutions” that is targeting federal, state and U.S. Defense Department clients, according to job postings on the company’s careers website.

Amazon has also hired two former federal government employees who have been turning up at various cloud computing conferences in the Washington, D.C. area. One is CJ Moses, whose online LinkedIn profile describes him as a former FBI Assistant Section Chief. The other is Andrew Doane, whose LinkedIn profile indicates he was previously a “technical director” with the U.S. government.

Asked about Amazon’s presence in Washington, DC, company spokeswoman Kay Kinton said, “we do have we have employees in the D.C. area focused on a variety of efforts with government agencies being just one of many.”

Kinton declined to name any government customers, but said, “Governments have the same requirements as other organizations  in the private sector — things like availability, security, scalability, and low cost — all of which we’re very focused on.”

Amazon did establish a relationship with one government client that may pay dividends in the future. The District of Columbia government lined up Amazon’s cloud services to provide extra capacity for the city’s websites during the Obama inauguration in January.

The city at the time made only modest use of Amazon’s cloud, but the deal provided some useful exposure for Amazon. D.C.’s chief technology officer at the time, Vivek Kundra, went on to become the federal government’s chief information officer under Obama, and has been an advocate for increasing use of cloud services by government agencies.

The White House recently released an analysis with its 2010 budget request that calls for a “fundamental reexamination of investments in technology infrastructure” and envisions various government cloud-computing pilot projects. The pilots will produce expected savings “many times the original investment” as agencies reduce their use of data centers, the document says.

Despite the growing buzz in government circles around cloud computing, however, some experts say it’s still a long way to becoming the norm.

“There is a tremendous amount of excitement and interest and a lot of people are talking about it, but I don’t believe we’ve hit the state where there’s massive adoption,” said Peter Mell, a senior computer scientist and cloud computing project leader at the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“It takes time for government to adopt the new technology and use it effectively,” said Mell, whose agency studies ways to improve the country’s technology infrastructure.

[Flickr photo via paper or plastic?]