Federal agencies move closer to cloud computing

As the federal government moves toward taking advantage of cloud computing, Google is poised to jump in and capture a big part of this potentially lucrative market. The General Services Administration this month issued a Request For Quotation for cloud storage, web hosting, and virtual machine services, signaling the strong federal interest.

David Mihalchik, Google's business development manager for the federal space, told Federal News Radio last week that the federal government spends billions of dollars each year building and maintaining IT infrastructure, and still is not keeping pace with technology innovation because of long procurement cycles. Once everything is in order, the technology is outdated.

Mihalchik argues that cloud computing could be a perfect solution to this problem, and sees GSA's RFQ as a clear signal that the government is moving to execute and implement a government-wide initiative.

"This is the first major [RFQ] around cloud computing to be released and it's focused on leveraging cloud capabilities from commercial providers," Mihalchik said. "It's not an acquisition for the government to build its own cloud. I think that's very, very important and very telling."

He said the Obama administration is looking to leverage the capabilities that are available today, and gain cost savings and improved performance. And Google, the monolith of this new century, will be more than happy to help, and add billions to its already rich treasure trove.

For more on cloud computing:
- check out this federalnewsradio.com article