Growing IT demand calls for more cloud in government

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Similar to organizations in the private sector, federal agencies are looking to bolster the performance of IT solutions while reducing costs. But, at the same time, government IT demand is growing at a rate that is unsustainable with current practices.

Speaking at the recent Cloud Security Alliance Summit in San Francisco, federal CIO Vivek Kundra stated that growing demand of the government's computing requirements is causing more agencies to deploy cloud services, WindowsITPro reports.

According to the report, the U.S. government has increased its number of data centers from 432 to nearly 2,100 in the last decade. This has led the government to spend nearly 30 percent of its IT budget to support data center infrastructure.

Going forward, the government is looking to reduce the number of data centers it supports - a goal that Kundra said could be accomplished through the cloud. According to the report, Kundra has asked agencies to identify at least three IT systems that can be moved to the cloud within the next 18 months.

Earlier this year, Kundra introduced a 25-point IT reform strategy focused heavily on cloud adoption. In his report, Kundra noted that as much as 25 percent of the federal IT budget could be spent on cloud computing this year.