Follow Feds To The Cloud

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Michael A. Davies.

It’s not often that IT teams charged with new projects and initiatives say, "Let’s look at how the feds are doing things." The U.S. government’s IT systems are seen as slow, archaic and overly complex — think the Veterans Affairs Department’s huge claims backlog and the sorry state of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which handles only 6% of requests electronically. But thanks to the "Cloud First" and open data sharing initiatives that former federal CIO Vivek Kundra mandated, the government is an innovator when it comes to cloud computing and data security.

The benefits of that work aren’t limited to government agencies. Businesses can take advantage of it, too, particularly with regard to security issues. Our 2013 InformationWeek State of Cloud Computing Survey of nearly 450 business technology professionals at companies with 50 or more employees shows there’s a real need to address security concerns…

On one hand, the percentage of respondents predicting their companies will use few or no IT cloud services has dropped seven points since our 2012 survey, to 31%. But just 18% populate the middle ground — with a quarter to half of their services in the cloud — even though that’s what most CIOs we work say is the sweet spot for cloud uptake. Security is the top concern, specifically concerns about defects in cloud technology and the potential leakage of proprietary or customer data. Much lesser concerns are performance, vendor viability and vendor lock-in…

Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/government/cloud-saas/follow-feds-to-the-cloud/240153756