If the Feds endorse cloud computing will you follow?

By Larry Dignan | Sep 15, 2009 |

The federal government made a big splash with the launch of Apps.gov, a storefront designed to ease procurement headaches acquiring software and save money.

U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra is into the cloud. The launch of Apps.gov, as detailed Tuesday, is aimed toward agencies and department that need to innovate on the cheap—assuming you can call an IT budget of $75 billion a year cheap.

Assessing all the moving parts the real importance of Apps.gov will be as a case study. If the government—arguably a monolithic, slow enterprise riddled with legacy apps—can move to cloud apps why can’t your company?

There’s also another ripple effect here: Technology suppliers will increasingly have to play the software as a service game. As currently constructed players like Google and Salesforce.com are dominating the Apps.gov categories.

Cloud apps aren’t going to replace all of your software, but the feds are trying to show that you can replace more than you think.

 
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    ksheppard@...

    09/16/09 | Report as spam

    RE: If the Feds endorse cloud computing will you follow?

    No. Being a free citizen of the United States of American I will do what I want to do. If the cloud is where I think I should go, I'll go there if I can.

    Exactly where in the enumurated powers listed in the constitiution do the feds get any authority to, as you say, try "to show that you can replace more than you think"?

    Is it possible that the feds are quicker to look at the cloud because they are farther behind, that is, the benefit for them would actually be greater than it would be for the rest of us?

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    adornoe@...

    09/16/09 | Report as spam

    A bad idea is bad no matter who's playing along

    If the jobs a business seeks to get done can be done without having to get on the "cloud", and if those jobs can be done more securely, and if the data can be safeguarded and accessed without having to worry about who else is using or massaging or "stealing" your data, then it's best to stay off the "cloud" environments.

    A bad idea is no less bad when the government does it or if a gazillion dollars super-multinational-conglomerate does it.

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Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

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Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn't hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Andrew Nusca

Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet. As a journalist based in New York City, he has written for Popular Mechanics and Men's Vogue and his byline has appeared in New York magazine, The Huffington Post, New York Daily News, Editor & Publisher, New York Press and many others. He also writes The Editorialiste, a media criticism blog.

He is a New York University graduate and former news editor and columnist of the Washington Square News. He is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has been named "Howard Kurtz, Jr." by film critic John Lichman despite having no relation to him. A native of Philadelphia, he lives in New York with his fiancée and his cat, Spats.

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Andrew Nusca

Andrew J. Nusca does not hold any investments in the technology companies he covers.
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