What’s Next for Cloud in the Federal Government?

By Chris Wiedemann, Consultant

immixGroup’s Event Center was packed to the gills the morning of April 12 with technology companies looking for insight into what’s next for federal cloud adoption. The good news is new federal policy, renewed emphasis from government leaders, and updated acquisition methods are creating opportunities for industry to sell technology as a service to the federal government.

So where are the cloud-specific opportunities? My colleague, DOD Manager Lloyd McCoy, and I talked on this issue for nearly an hour during our Market Intelligence Briefing portion of the event.

Here are some key highlights from this discussion that demonstrate where we’re seeing an uptick on cloud adoption in the federal IT community:

1. Department of Commerce:
   Look for Census to be a big cloud customer for the next few years. The team behind the 2020 Decennial Census will be focusing on development and testing of production systems and a lot of those test platforms will be hosted in a commercial cloud. The ultimate goal will be to have all systems operational and ready for a full test by the end of FY18.
2. Treasury:
   The opportunity here is at the IRS, which is doing market research on workforce management, contact recording, and contact analysis tools in the cloud. The rest of Treasury will be focused on service providers, especially at the Administrative Resource Center out of the Fiscal Service. ARC will own a hybrid or community cloud, requiring support from service management and CRM-type tools.
3. Department of Homeland Security:
   DHS has long advocated for private cloud or government-owned cloud models for data center consolidation. But now there’s real movement toward public cloud adoption at the top level, opening up an industry opportunity. The Office of the CIO is building a program called Enterprise Computing Services, which will act like a cloud purchasing vehicle for DHS. The department has run pilots of major public cloud offerings, with the end goal being the Information Technology Services Office acting as that DHS cloud broker.
4. Defense Information Systems Agency:
   DISA wants the next generation of its Defense Enterprise Email hosted by a commercial cloud provider. The agency wants it to accommodate Level 5 data and support over 4 million users. Look for an RFP this spring and an award by the end this year.

Want to hear more? Click here for an on-demand video recording. We’ll also have more blog posts on event highlights, including a panel of federal cloud leaders who provided details on their cloud adoption success stories and the challenges they’re now facing.

Need help identifying top IT decision makers and opportunities in government? Contact immixGroup’s industry-leading Market Intelligence team today to learn about specific programs and contacts that have a pressing need for your IT solution.