The movement to cloud computing by the Military is something that’s been in the works for some time.  However, the movement has been slow as they wrestled with security concerns, and a shrinking budget.

However, with the default approach being BAD (build another datacenter), the use of any cloud computing service, even a private cloud that should provide more resource sharing, is a step in the right direction.  Storage requirements for binary information, such as intelligence and surveillance information, are immense. Thus, a less expensive approach will pay dividends down the road.

The US government has not made the progress that we had hoped to see in moving major systems to private and public clouds.  Despite a “Cloud First” strategy, there seems to be interest, but a lacking desire to get by the first few steps to the cloud.