Tight Budget? Look to the ‘Cloud’
By VIVEK KUNDRA
NYT
Cambridge, Mass.
AS the global economy struggles through a slow and painful recovery, governments around the world are wasting billions of dollars on unnecessary information technology. This problem has worsened in recent years because of what I call the “I.T. cartel.” This powerful group of private contractors encourages reliance on inefficient software and hardware that is expensive to acquire and to maintain.
In one particularly egregious example of waste, the Defense Department last year pulled the plug on a personnel system devised by Northrop Grumman after spending approximately $850 million on it in 10 years.
When I joined the Obama administration as the chief information officer, we quickly discovered vast inefficiencies in the $80 billion federal I.T. budget. We also saw an opportunity to increase productivity and save costs by embracing the “cloud computing” revolution: the shift from hardware and software that individuals, businesses and governments buy and then maintain themselves, to low-cost, maintenance-free services that are based on the Internet and run by private companies.
Examples of cloud computing companies include Web behemoths like Amazon and Google, which offer a variety of services (data storage or e-mail, for example), as well as companies like salesforce.com, which helps businesses manage customer relationships via social networks. Other services and applications include health care access, mobile energy management and storm recovery assistance. Most cloud-based services are either free for consumers or delivered via a monthly subscription service for businesses. According to the research firm Gartner, cloud computing will be a $149 billion industry by 2015.
(More here.)
NYT
Cambridge, Mass.
AS the global economy struggles through a slow and painful recovery, governments around the world are wasting billions of dollars on unnecessary information technology. This problem has worsened in recent years because of what I call the “I.T. cartel.” This powerful group of private contractors encourages reliance on inefficient software and hardware that is expensive to acquire and to maintain.
In one particularly egregious example of waste, the Defense Department last year pulled the plug on a personnel system devised by Northrop Grumman after spending approximately $850 million on it in 10 years.
When I joined the Obama administration as the chief information officer, we quickly discovered vast inefficiencies in the $80 billion federal I.T. budget. We also saw an opportunity to increase productivity and save costs by embracing the “cloud computing” revolution: the shift from hardware and software that individuals, businesses and governments buy and then maintain themselves, to low-cost, maintenance-free services that are based on the Internet and run by private companies.
Examples of cloud computing companies include Web behemoths like Amazon and Google, which offer a variety of services (data storage or e-mail, for example), as well as companies like salesforce.com, which helps businesses manage customer relationships via social networks. Other services and applications include health care access, mobile energy management and storm recovery assistance. Most cloud-based services are either free for consumers or delivered via a monthly subscription service for businesses. According to the research firm Gartner, cloud computing will be a $149 billion industry by 2015.
(More here.)
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