Federal government set to close data centers in move to cloud

The White House has been clear in its wishes to move as much government data as possible to the cloud. President Obama’s chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, recently announced that the federal government plans to close 800 data centers and move as much work as possible to the cloud by 2015.

There are approximately 2,100 data centers run by the federal government. The work processes carried out by the 800 closing centers would be moved to a cloud network, something Kundra says is essential for the government to embrace.

According to TechEye.com, Kundra noted that an unnamed multimedia company increased its customer base from 25,000 to 250,000 in three days after switching to cloud computing.

Kundra said the switch to the cloud will have three stages - use of commercial cloud services when possible, the launch of private government clouds for sensitive data and collaborating with state and local governments with regional clouds.

Several government agencies have signed on to cloud services. Recently, the General Services Administration and the Department of Agriculture both moved their employees’ email services and applications to cloud providers.