What Really is the Future of Cloud?

By Chris Wiedemann, Consultant

There’s a real chance that 5-10 years from now, the way we deliver technology to government will fundamentally change. We just need to make sure we can maintain the same level of partnership and focus on the government mission, while providing the same level of choice in what the technology industry has to offer.

That was my answer to “What is the future of cloud?”—one of the many discussions among industry and government cloud experts at the recent Federal Executive Forum on Secure Cloud Computing in Government 2016. The radio program was broadcast on Federal News Radio with moderator Jim Flyzik directing the conversation.

It was interesting to hear perspectives from government cloud leaders as well as industry representatives on how they view the future of cloud. David Shive, the General Services Administration chief information officer, predicts that the borders that exist in infrastructure will continue to dissolve over time, the same way they dissolved within user computing years ago. He also says the acquisition of cloud-based technology will become more closely aligned with the rapid pace of change in IT.

The Army is looking at the overall future of technology out to 2040 and Col. John Rozsnyai, who runs the enterprise architecture division within Army’s HQDA/G-6, says the emphasis will be on edge sensors that will help get more data more quickly and help people make faster decisions.

The cloud lead at the Defense Information Systems Agency, John Hale, sees the future game changer as mobility, especially as government recruits the next generation of workers.  They want the data to make key decisions now in their hand. His concern is that if government doesn’t meet those needs, the workforce will find the information elsewhere and it may not meet certain security requirements.

On the industry side, Cisco’s director of solutions and chief technology officer, Dan Kent, pointed out that cloud is just one transformation among many that are happening. He sees IT playing in places it’s never played before such as the Internet of Things, and cloud is the infrastructure that will make it happen seamlessly. Don Hewatt, director of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Public Sector Workload & Cloud Practice, says the way we define as-a-Service will evolve, with Software-as-a-Service and Application-as-a-Service becoming more relevant.

Whatever the future, it will be interesting to watch. Watch clips or the entire program to get more of the conversation.