US Government Moves to the Cloud with Apps.gov

You wouldn't expect the government to be on the cutting edge of technology but a new push by the White House will have many US government organizations move to the cloud in an effort to cut costs associated with IT. A first step is the launch of the new Apps.gov site, which is an online marketplace for cloud-based services with products from the likes of Google, Salesforce, Scribd and many others. The announcement came from Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra himself.

“Apps.gov is an online storefront for federal agencies to quickly browse and purchase cloud-based IT services, for productivity, collaboration, and efficiency. Cloud computing is the next generation of IT in which data and applications will be housed centrally and accessible anywhere and anytime by a various devices. [...] By consolidating available services, Apps.gov is a one-stop source for cloud services – an innovation that not only can change how IT operates, but also save taxpayer dollars in the process,” Kundra wrote on the White House blog.

The US government spends $75 billion every year on IT and the new initiative is meant to drive the costs down while also making it easy to keep up with the latest developments. It should also make it a lot easier to deploy new products, something that required several steps and a cumbersome procurement process.

The Apps.gov store has a large number of products spread out into four main categories: Business Apps, Cloud IT Services, Productivity Apps and Social Media Apps. Each category is then further divided into several subcategories though a significant number of them don't have any actual products listed yet. Many areas are already covered though, from social networking sites like FriendFeed and Facebook to virtualization products from VMware. Other companies that haven't been included, like Amazon, are understandably excited about the opportunity, especially in this economy where the government is one of the few big players still committed to making big investments in IT.