The Fed 2011 Agenda: Rush to the Cloud ! - 0 views
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The new 25-point plan establishes a Data Center Consolidation Task Force with a goal of reducing the number of data centers by 800 as of 2015.
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The plan also touts scalability as a reason for embracing the cloud over traditional solutions. It cited the example of a private-sector company doing video editing that experienced a surge of demand and was able, using the cloud, to scale from 50 to 4,000 virtual machines in three days.
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There's an expectation that moving applications such as e-mail to the cloud will facilitate data center consolidation and reduce IT budgets. Some federal agencies have already awarded contracts to move e-mail to the cloud. In addition, the government has selected a dozen vendors to supply Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas).
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Google and Microsoft want the government’s cloud business and they’ve undertaken a PR campaign including announcements of high-profile contract awards. The General Services Administration (GSA) recently awarded Unisys and Google a contract to host e-mail in the cloud. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) selected Dell to supply Microsoft Online Services for the migration of 120,000 users and 21 e-mail systems to the cloud.
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Microsoft was the winner of a Department of the Interior contract for moving e-mail to the cloud, a selection that Google protested. Google and its reseller, Onix Networking Corp, have filed suit against the Department of the Interior to overturn that selection.
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Both Google Apps for Government and BPOS have been certified as being compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). Being given FISMA Authority to Operate (ATO) is a certification the cloud infrastructure is a secure, trusted environment for government applications and databases they use.
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The federal contracts for hosting e-mail in the cloud are not the first Big Government embrace of hosted e-mail. Microsoft reportedly has several hundred state and local agencies using its cloud services. New York City recently announced it will adopt Microsoft BPOS for 30,000 city users.
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The State of California awarded a contract to Microsoft and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) for the migration of 130 of e-mail systems to Microsoft BPOS.
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The State of Minnesota Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) announced an agreement with Microsoft to migrate Exchange e-mail and other communications services to BPOS in a private cloud.
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"In December 2010, the government's CIO, Vivek Kundra, released a 25-point plan for an overhaul of Federal IT that emphasizes a cloud-first policy for federal agencies. Currently the federal government is on pace to spend $79 billion on IT this year, with more than 20% going to infrastructure spending. Because the US government has spent $600 billion on IT over the past decade, the plan's intent is to reduce IT spending by the federal government."