Interesting post today over at the Whitehouse.gov blog by Vivek Kundra, the U.S. Chief Information Officer. The post describes both the rationale as well as what cloud computing, at least what it means to the US Government.
Here are a couple of the more interesting parts.
"For those of you not familiar with cloud computing, here is a brief explanation. There was a time when every household, town, or village had its own water well. Today, shared public utilities give us access to clean water by simply turning on the tap. Cloud computing works a lot like our shared public utilities. However, instead of water coming from a tap, users access computing power from a pool of shared resources. Just like the tap in your kitchen, cloud computing services can be turned on or off as needed, and, when the tap isn’t on, not only can the water be used by someone else, but you aren’t paying for resources that you don’t use. Cloud computing is a new model for delivering computing resources – such as networks, servers, storage, or software applications."
The post clearly outlines the use of Cloud Computing within the US federal government's IT strategy. "The Obama Administration is committed to leveraging the power of cloud computing to help close the technology gap and deliver for the American people. I am hopeful that that the Recovery Board’s move to the cloud will serve as a model for making government’s use of technology smarter, better, and faster."
Read the rest here