How the Obama administration is looking at cloud computing |
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How the Obama administration is looking at cloud computing
Vivek Kundra at the UW
Vivek Kundra, the U.S. chief information officer, stopped at the University of Washington this afternoon on a tour of West Coast tech companies. During a speech hosted by the UW's Evans School of Public Affairs, he described the Obama administration's broad plan to modernize the government's technology infrastructure.
Part of that plan is to shift to cloud computing services -- an area where Microsoft, Google, Amazon.com and many others will be competing heavily for government business. (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke on the topic during a separate event at the UW today.) As part of his speech, Kundra explained some of the basics of what the government will be looking for in cloud computing services.
First, and no surprise here, Kundra cited the importance of having secure systems. He specifically called out efforts by Microsoft to make its cloud-computing services comply with the guidelines of government agencies, also citing moves by Google and Amazon.com in that direction. Apart from that, he said it's important for cloud systems to be interoperable, working well with other systems, and for data to be portable so that the government isn't stuck with one particular provider for the long term.
"The market is responding to the demand from the federal goverbment around services that we’re interested in," he said. In shifting more toward cloud computing, the government wants to move away from investing on its own in computing infrastructure that can quickly become obsolete.
At the same time, he made it clear that the government obviously has a long way to go. One problem, he said, is that government is operating as a loosely coupled federation, not like the large enterprise that it is. Agencies aren't pooling their buying power. Among other statistics, he said the government has 1,100 data centers and more than 24,000 websites, demonstrating the need for simplification.
Asked about cloud computing standards, Kundra said the government doesn't want to set the standards, but instead wants to make sure that there's a platform for the industry to work out the details.
Note: I'll be participating in a roundtable discussion with Kundra this afternoon. Send a message to toddbishop@bizjournals.com or @toddbishop on Twitter if there's anything you want me to ask.
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