Could the Cloud Derail a $300 Million Data Center?

1sockchuck writes "The cloud computing debate has come into focus for taxpayers in Washington state, where a proposed $300 million project to build a data center in Olympia for the state's IT operations is coming under scrutiny. Two legislators are urging the state to shift applications to the cloud instead, noting that two of the largest cloud computing providers (Microsoft and Amazon) are based in the state. The critics say the data center project is driven by an interest in local construction and 'fails to seriously explore the larger strategic question facing government technology today.'"

Comments

Re:*blinks*

[Albanach]

If I lived in that state, I'd be pretty upset by the mere suggestion that it would be a good idea to have all the private information which the state holds about me go through either Microsoft or Google.

If you're hosting your own images and just using their processors, storage and bandwidth then what I would be concerned about is the privacy policy that forms part of the contract. Properly set up however, the important data should be arriving at the cloud encrypted and be stored encrypted. The host should have no ability to access raw personal data.

Personally I'm wondering just what sort of IT infrastructure they have that demands a $300 million data center? With 66,000 employees that's $4500 per employee. Just what is the data center for?