UK government being helped by cloud computing

Thursday, July 21, 2011

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, U.K. government policy makers will now be able to work on classified documents across its departments in a secure manner after an agreement was reached with a cloud services provider.

Alastair Mitchell, CEO of the cloud company, said the only method government officials previously could use to share documents was secure email.

"Try working on a 500-page document to be shared by 20 people," Mitchell told the Wall Street Journal. "It is a nightmare."

"Cloud-based solutions get round the problem of having multiple versions of documents stored on individual computers," wrote the Wall Street Journal's Ben Rooney. "They also help tackle the issue of users, when faced with obtrusive security procedures, using their insecure Gmail or Hotmail accounts."

The cloud services provider to U.K. policy makers is also in talks with U.S. officials for a similar offering, according to the report.

Cisco's chief technologist for the company's Internet Business Solutions Group, Dave Evans, said that cloud computing is one of 10 technologies that will be vital in the tech world during the next decade, according to a recent Network World report.