Computersight -

Introduction

Looking into the immediate horizon, one can well imagine that, in five to ten years, we may not speak of “the cloud” or “cloud computing” anymore. This is because using what we now regard as cloud-based services-for applications, for storage, for e-mail, etc.-may simply become the way things are done. Just as today we no longer can tell if a phone call is from an analog or a cell phone, in the very near future-sooner than most think-we may no longer be able to know-or care-whether the program we are using or the data we are accessing resides on our desktop, our laptop, our cell phone, or somewhere in the cloud (likely a data center in Oregon or Washington State).

How will all of this unfold? How long will it take? Where can government take the lead-and where will it lag? Will cloud computing replace 10, 20, 50, 75, or 80 percent of what we typically think of as the information technology (IT) function in organizations? Many believe that this will not be an overnight transformation. With the entrenched investments, people, and ways of in-house IT, Dave Girouard, Google’s President of Enterprise Computing, put it, “It will be a draining of the pond.”  After all, as the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) Henry Sienkiewicz recently stated, in government IT: “We have been good at throwing hardware and resources at things, but the ebb and flow of the cloud is a lot different for us both as providers and as users.”

It is unlikely that government agencies will move critical data sets and applications to public cloud environments anytime soon. However, there is likely to be rapid growth in cloud computing hosted in private cloud environments, with many hosted on-site for governments by vendors/service providers in hybrid cloud arrangements.

Ten Predictions for the Cloud-Enabled Future of Government Information Technology

1.     Cloud computing will take off at the local and state levels through mostly rogue, “under the radar” initiatives over the next few years.

2.     At the federal level, there will be a coordinated move to cloud computing, but with inevitable tension between agencies.

3.     There will be two to three incidents a year worldwide with potentially massive security breaches, involving much media attention and attendant calls for greater regulation and oversight of cloud providers.

4.     There will be much cooperation between private sector firms (seeking to be cloud service providers) and government agencies, with far more data and applications than expected today transitioning to the cloud over the next decade.

5.     Budget pressures will continue to drive more and more government IT to hybrid and even public clouds, as more and more former internal IT functions-and assets (hardware, software, data, and support personnel)-are outsourced, with billions in procurement dollars shifting to the cloud.

6.     There will be greater use of cloud computing, in everything from health care and education to the military and national security.

7.     Free cloud offerings-even beyond the e-mail, storage, and application functions found today-will be a significant part of IT portfolios in most governmental agencies.

8.     The spillover effect of government use of cloud computing will include faster agreements among major cloud providers on standards and cloud interoperability protocols.

9.     There will be significant legal action arising out of governmental uses of cloud computing, and legislation addressing both IT and business needs and consumer fears and protections will be a major focus over the next decade.

10. The “democratization of technology” brought about by cloud computing will impact the quality of our individual online lives, the growth of businesses, and the pace of innovation, benefiting us all.

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David C. Wyld (dwyld@selu.edu) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His most recent work is “Moving to the Cloud: An Introduction to Cloud Computing in Government,” by David C. Wyld. It is a research monograph published by The IBM Center for the Business of Government, Washington, DC in November 2009. The complete report is available for free to download in PDF format at:   http://www.businessofgovernment.org/pdfs/WyldCloudReport.pdf.