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The Economics of Federal Cloud Computing Analyzed

Posted by kdawson on from the clouds'-illusions-i-recall dept.

jg21 writes "With the federal government about to spend $20B on IT infrastructure, this highly analytical article by two Booz Allen Hamilton associates makes it clear that cloud computing has now received full executive backing and offers clear opportunities for agencies to significantly reduce their growing expenditures for data centers and IT hardware. From the article: 'A few agencies are already moving quickly to explore cloud computing solutions and are even redirecting existing funds to begin implementations... Agencies should identify the aspects of their current IT workload that can be transitioned to the cloud in the near term to yield "early wins" to help build momentum and support for the migration to cloud computing.'"

3 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Just typical by Cryacin · · Score: 5, Funny

    These government types always have their heads in the clouds...

    --
    Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
  2. Economies of Scale by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Cloud computing provides lower costs due to attaining economies of scale. The federal government certainly has scale to attain any efficiencies that a cloud operator might use to reduce the cost. It is scary to think the government will hand over data and processing to the cloud instead of providing a federally managed private cloud on a secure private network. This reeks of lobbying and special interests. Follow the money.

  3. Cloud computing offers nothing. by v(*_*)vvvv · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Cloud computing offers nothing. And by nothing I mean nothing new. Nor does it fix anything. The internet already works.

    There, I said it.

    For 99% of us, a web server does everything we need it to. Redundancy and fault tolerance are already very easy to buy in other forms that are perfectly reliable and non-invasive (RAID, adding servers for specific services, buying better hardware etc). These problems were solved long ago.

    Yes, for the rare corporation that requires huge server clusters, cloudifying their infrastructure is the right direction to go. But that and buying a cloud are two completely different stories. If your server count is already that high, then you most likely already have the budget and the people to create your own cloud optimized for your specific needs, that works only for you.

    Just like businesses love dedicated servers even when a shared server would do fine, businesses also love dedicated clouds.

    Cloud providers need to think again about what and to whom they are selling. I see a market for super cheap hosting for the masses by selling competitive hosting packages by leveraging the cost efficiency and performance benefits of a cloud. I also see a market for dedicated custom cloud solutions for the high end market. However, both of these markets are extremely saturated, and if you are not selling anything new, you are primarily competing by price alone. Any such market is a lot of hard work for not so much money.

    So good luck! PS. I am not buying.