Government Bits

Tracking how technology is transforming interaction between governments and citizens.

.

The adoption of cloud computing has steadily become one of the most significant enablers of innovation in recent years. From providing mobile access to remotely synchronized folders, to delivering on-demand streams of new video releases, the cloud has transformed how consumers interact with their devices in countless ways (often quietly behind the scenes).

Further blurring the line between private and public sector innovation, government agencies are increasingly turning to the cloud for similar technical advantages that translate directly into business value for their enterprises as well.

.

.

In fact, IDC predicts that public IT cloud services will see gains at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.4 percent—five times that of the IT industry overall between 2012 and 2016. But despite promises of significant gains in agility, scalability, and reliability, most public sector executives commit to extensively crunching the numbers on ROI and addressing security concerns (at both agency and content levels) before taking the plunge into even the most popular cloud service models, including:

Earlier this year, the TechAmerica Foundation comprised a group of thought leaders to serve on the Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2). The Commission’s three-month mandate was to provide the Obama Administration with recommendations for how government should deploy cloud technologies and for public policies that will help drive U.S. innovation in the cloud.

On July 26, the Commission released its recommendations in a report (.pdf) on its site and at events in a few locations across the U.S., including Washington, D.C. A shorter summary of the report is also available from the TechAmerica Foundation site.

Our own Barry Leffew, VP of Public Sector, was among the 71 Commissioners who lent their expertise and participated in the process of developing the recommendations.

Barry attended the Washington, D.C. event last week and also spoke as part of a panel arranged by BMC Software, which also had representation among the Commissioners. In addition to Barry, the panel included Commissioners from BMC, Red Hat, Inc., Cisco Systems, and Harris Corp.

We caught up with Barry at the CLOUD2 event to capture his thoughts on the Commission, the recommendations and the BMC panel on which he sat. Check out the video below.

As always, we’re interested in your thoughts and continuing the conversation on CLOUD2 and otherwise. Keep in touch with us on Twitter @AdobeGov and our Facebook page.

By Heyward Drummond, solutions consultant for collaboration strategies, Public Sector, Adobe

On October 26 and 27 in Washington, D.C., Adobe hosted the Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Green IT conference. The event focused on those three topics,including dedicated conference tracks that provided deep dives by topic experts.

During the event, Adobe also hosted a session for Federal Government attendees on our own green initiatives at Adobe. I was pleased to be the speaker at the session, and touched on the company’s efforts and accomplishments in this regard. In part, I discussed how we leverage Adobe Connect to reduce travel and improve our day-to-day collaboration at the company. Of course, the product is also used by many U.S. Federal agencies and extensively across military organizations today as a means to cut green house pollution, decrease travel costs and also reduce the daily commute for Federal workers.

Take a look at this brief video we shot at the event, where I discussed the conference, my talk and Adobe Connect in more detail.