Cloud Computing: The “Greener” Solution for Government
Filed under: Authentication Trends, General Information, Uncategorized
Upon visiting apps.gov, out of curiosity about what exactly cloud computing is, I came across the video showing the new plans the government has in store. Typically known as a huge overwhelming IT “creature”, the government is planning on changing their ways, in regards to IT systems.
Currently the government is riddled with 100s of systems, unique applications and environments, all across the globe. There are large IT infrastructures behind these individual systems supporting them as separate entities. What has now been looked at more closely is that some of these large systems are duplicating work that many other systems are completing as well, such as email functions.
The U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra is onboard with combining these massive infrastructures, to cut down on the serious carbon footprint they are leaving behind. With the idea of combining services and using the same infrastructure for multiple environments the government is attempting to cut down on costs.
Of course the question is will it work? The hope is that there will be less maintenance costs, less staff to maintain, and it is a greener solution. The government is showing the greatest amounts of concern with security, privacy, and procurement at the moment. Of course it is a giant system, with many legacy applications, that many are predicting will not go away.
If anything is to change it won’t be fast, and will be almost like a case study for the government to attack at all angles. The main idea that this brought up is if the government can do it, why can’t we? Although most of us are relying on external IT infrastructure, it would be interesting to see what would happen if everyone was onboard with cloud computing.
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