Agencies identify 78 services for cloud transition

Federal agencies have identified 78 computer systems they plan to migrate to the cloud within a year, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The listing follows a directive in OMB's 25-point plan to reform federal IT, published in December 2010, that ordered federal agencies to identify three services they could move to the cloud by May 2012. The transition to cloud computing should save the federal government at least $5 billion annually, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra told members of a Senate panel. A firmer estimate of those savings will have to wait on individual contracts for the moves to be negotiated and other factors, Kundra said. Computer clouds essentially are large banks of computer servers that can operate much closer to full capacity than standard servers by rapidly repacking data as one customer surges in usage and another one dips. Data storage in the cloud is operated like electricity grids or other utilities, with customers paying only for what they use. A handful of low-risk government services, such as websites that don't take in sensitive public information, are already in privately owned cloud space. But some government officials have expressed skepticism about moving some very sensitive or complex operations to either private clouds or to government-only clouds, worrying that the move could jeopardize security.