US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said cloud computing will play a major role as the nation’s spy agencies work to integrate computer and information systems to share more data securely. Cloud computing has “huge potential for achieving savings and promoting integration,” Clapper told an audience last week at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington. Cloud computing lets users run programmes and store data over the internet. Along […]
government
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After a delay due to a complicated vendor-authorization process, the General Services Administration (GSA) is finally offering cloud computing services via its Apps.gov website. Federal agencies now can order from a menu of three Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings–cloud storage, virtual machines and Web hosting–from service providers that have received GSA authorities to operate (ATOs) to offer them. It was the process of acquiring ATOs that delayed the GSA’s plans to offer IaaS on […]
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) expects to save 40% over the next five years by switching its financial management application to a cloud computing vendor — a sign of the massive savings to come from the U.S. federal government’s shift to the software-as-a-service model. The EEOC ran a competitive bid and chose Global Computer Enterprises (GCE) of Reston, Va., to provide Oracle’s Financials Release 12 software in a cloud-based delivery model. The five-year contract […]
Cloud computing and business process outsourcing (BPO) will become increasingly popular with government IT departments during 2011 as funding cuts start to bite, according to analyst firm Ovum. In a report entitled 2011 Trends to Watch: Government Technology, analyst Jessica Hawkins predicts that consumption-based technologies that are delivered through the cloud will grow in use due to the cost-savings they can offer. “Because cloud delivery means a lot of infrastructure is owned and operated by […]
CSC, the American technology firm announced the results of a study that reveals a willingness within the government and IT community to be flexible around security governance to benefit from cloud computing and shared services. Results show that users are open to sharing sensitive activities in the cloud, as long as the parties involved share similar characteristics and have the same cultural approach to security. The report, titled ‘Shared Services: A perfect storm of opportunity,’ […]
Even Bill Clinton is a fan of the cloud! From the New York Times: Back in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was president, cell phones weighed five pounds and no one dreamed of using them to do anything besides make phone calls. Now, they’re used to connect us for more powerful causes — like raising a billion dollars for Haiti, President Clinton said at the Dreamforce 2010 conference in San Francisco Wednesday. And that’s largely […]
One of the key points of this article from here is, “A lot of agencies have lost their way and they are becoming IT departments instead of focusing on their mission”. Is this true of your business and IT? meshIP can get your business out of the IT business. The General Services Administration’s decision to hire Unisys to move its e-mail to the cloud in many ways is the proof of concept for the rest […]
According to a story in The Washington Post, the General Services Administration’s decision last week to move its e-mail program to a Web-based system modeled on Google’s popular Gmail program is part of a major government drive to increase federal use of cloud computing. The GSA is the first federal agency to make the Internet switch, and its decision follows the Office of Management and Budget’s declaration last month that the government is now operating […]