White House announces its cloud adoption strategy

Recently, White House technology officials released the outline for its cloud computing strategy. The adoption of the managed IT service is slowly growing government-wide, as more federal agencies realize the benefits of cloud solutions. 

The White House's outline, The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, provides the public with a framework for its migration, redefines contracts with various vendors, addressing security and governance concerns and also includes case studies, which highlight other federal agencies' adoption processes.

The strategy states agencies should consider the benefits that each vendor provides, and how soon the service can be implemented, before choosing one to manage their IT responsibilities.

For agencies, the White House's strategy states they must "include explicit service level agreements for security, continuity of operations and service quality that meet their individual needs."

So far, of the government's reported $80 billion IT budget, $20 billion has been allocated for agencies to invest and migrate to the cloud, according to estimates received by the Office of Management and Budget.

In the public sector, cloud adoption is as strong as ever. In fact, IDC recently predicted the public cloud revenue will reach $29.5 billion by 2015.