Which Agencies are Leading the Way into the Cloud?

Government agencies have been using private clouds longer than public clouds. Although there are many reasons to use public clouds in lieu of on-premise systems, the initial reluctance of government agencies was due to concerns related to compliance with FISMA. Unlike private clouds, which typically have one system owner who´s responsible for managing the security controls, with public clouds, managing the security controls is a shared responsibility between the system owner and the customer. In 2012, FedRAMP established a process for managing and authorizing clouds with shared responsibilities. In the years to come, it will be interesting to see if IT budgets decrease as spending on public clouds increases.