Predictions on the government cloud already coming true

Friday, January 20, 2012

Current predictions in the cloud computing industry forecast the integration of cloud services into government agencies in the near future, and may not be too far off the mark.

IDC Government Insights (IDC) recently published a report entitled "Best Practices: Regional Community Cloud Hubs." The document predicts that federal branches will soon begin to act as managed service providers to one another as each agency upgrades to the cloud, eliminating the security concerns associated with such a change.

"Smaller government agencies may choose to get out of most IT hosting and management operations, as long as they can find reliable, affordable and privately hosted solutions through the cloud," said Shawn McCarthy, research analyst at IDC.

These predictions are already coming true. Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA completed a proposed upgrade and transferred 25,000 email in-boxes to a cloud platform. The NOAA reportedly hopes for decreased communications costs associated with more traditional solutions.

The g-cloud holds a lot of potential for any government that is looking to improve workload capacity, and as operational costs decrease, the g-cloud will become a viable and trusted option.