Andrea DiMaio

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Andrea Di Maio
VP Distinguished Analyst
12 years at Gartner
25 years IT industry

Andrea Di Maio is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, the business value of IT, open-source software… Read Full Bio

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Recovery is in the Public Cloud

by Andrea Di Maio  |  May 13, 2010  |  3 Comments

Today the US Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board announced that their web site Recovery.gov went live on Amazon EC2 (see also here for coverage by O’Reilly Radar and here for the White House blog). According to the announcement, this is the first government-wide system to go to the cloud, although I thought that the move of USA.gov to Terremark and of USASpending.gov to NASA Nebula were earlier examples.

Besides the expected savings, which are quantified in 750,000 USD, the interesting aspect of this announcement is that it shows how government can use the public cloud. In fact there is too much discussion about the need for a private cloud (or government cloud or community cloud) for government agencies to leverage this computing model. On the other hand, I’ve always told clients that there is a lot that can be done with web sites and other non-sensitive data and applications: Recovery.gov is a great example because it is a high profile, enterprise-wide initiative.

I am looking forward to more examples where agencies in all tiers of government start using existing cloud-based infrastructure and software rather than just waiting for government clouds to emerge.

However, just as an interesting coincidence, look here at how Amazon Web Services experienced some problems lately.

3 Comments »

Category: cloud     Tags: ,

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Tweets that mention Recovery is in the Public Cloud -- Topsy.com   May 13, 2010 at 4:00 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andrea DiMaio, open3gov. open3gov said: RT @AndreaDiMaio Recovery is in the Public Cloud – http://bit.ly/beuoXe #gov20 #cloud [...]

  • 2 Christopher Dorobek   May 14, 2010 at 1:27 pm

    FYI — I think they are saying it is the first time that the government has used the Amazon.com EC2 cloud platform.
    cjd

  • 3 Andrea Di Maio   May 14, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    @Christopher – I’m afraid the sentence in the White House blog is “Recovery.gov is the first government-wide system to move to the cloud. ” and does not leave any room for interpretation. Should one assume that previous pilots did not work? :)