Friday, February 5, 2010

Governments Meet Cloud




As governments are looking for ways to tighten their budget and ways to operate government's data more efficiently, more governments and various agencies are looking into Cloud Computing to find the answers. With the Cloud Computing, they can share vast amount of data, applications, and servers over the Internet.

As governments do not need to maintain servers and update applications, which can be handled by service providers, they can save significant amount of money and arguably get better services.

One of the simple questions you might ask is, "what about security?"
Needless to say, governments have tremendous amount of privacy-sensitive data, and they have to consider risks once it is on the Internet.

One of the Cloud providers, IBM, is taking steps into this issue

The U.S. Air Force has decided to tackle this issue head-on and they’ve asked for IBM’s help. During the next 10 months, IBM researchers, software architects, cyber security experts and analytics specialists will work alongside military personnel and representatives from other federal agencies to hopefully overcome the hurdle.
Cyber security is a global issue, so the potential benefits of this project extend far beyond U.S. military services. The U.S. Air Force recognizes that new thinking, new technologies, and new levels of collaboration between government and industry will be required to find viable solutions. As a retired Air Force lieutenant general, I’m extremely proud that my service branch is taking the initiative to get ahead of one of the world’s greatest security challenges
Government Services | A Smarter Planet Blog

Although the security issues are still not entirely cleared and it will not be risk-free at any time soon, more governments are considering Cloud Computing as cost effective and agile strategies.

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