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When Barack Obama was elected as President of United States, I predicted that his administration would tap into Cloud
Computing for governance. Soon Obama team was talking about moving the Government to Clouds. In fact, there
was even “bipartisan” support for the idea. It only make sense to move the
government to the Clouds when the economy is in such a mess and there is a
strong need to cut down Government spending to balance the budget. Any cut in
unnecessary Government spending, however small it may be, bodes well in this
economy.
Today, there is a news that the Government is planning to move USA.Gov, the US Government’s
official internet portal, to the Clouds. The U.S General Services Administration
(GSA) has selected Terremark Worldwide, Inc., the provider of Enterprise Cloud
Computing Platform, to power USA.Gov portal.
The distributed grid architecture of the enterprise cloud
offers the necessary redundancy, scalability and flexibility needed for the
national government portal. With Terramark’s Cloud, it is possible to seamlessly
add or remove additional computing resources just with a few mouse clicks. Their
cluster supports Linux, Solaris and Windows and a dashboard to manage the
computing resources offering full control. They are PCI Compliant and have
successfully completed SAS 70 Type II audit which makes sure the infrastructure
is compliant with regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.
The main advantages of moving USA.Gov to Cloud are
- The government can save money in this deep economic downturn while moving to
a superior technology infrastructure - This administration can then follow what they preach. Using green
technologies for the functioning of the Government helping to reduce the
negative effects to environment - As I have indicated in one of my other posts, this will help enterprises
trust Cloud Computing more
This is a good first step but I would like the federal government and other
state governments move their entire infrastructure to the Clouds starting with
apps like Email, Office Productivity Suite, etc.. It will be wise to follow the
footsteps of Washington DC local Government. We need more Vivek Kundras in every
federal department and state governments.
