Cloud computing is becoming a fact of life as agencies are pressed to make IT infrastructures more flexible and efficient. Agencies can off-load much of the work and expense of acquiring and managing hardware, software and services under a variety of cloud models, but responsibility cannot be outsourced.

State and local governments are expanding their use of cloud-based services, but it’s hard to pick a clear winner among cloud providers in the public-sector market.

As the nation’s first federal CIO, Vivek Kundra brought a high-energy approach to the job and a wealth of fresh ideas to promote innovation and efficiency. He won support, sparked conversation and elbowed the status quo out of the way a few times. But it remains to be seen whether his initiatives have staying power now that he has left the government.

Congress can put its weight behind standards efforts, acquisition policies and laws that promote trust to move cloud computing forward, representatives from industry and government told members of the House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation at a hearing in Washington.

The federal government's adoption of cloud computing is not merely critical to technology innovation, but also is crucial to ensure that the United States can remain economically competitive across the globe, technology experts said Wednesday.

Under pressure to move to cloud computing by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), yet harboring intractable concerns about protecting sensitive data, many federal agency managers are opting for private clouds, which they consider more secure than public cloud environments.

The Open Group has released a book on how organizations can use cloud computing to gain business benefit.

Federal agencies — ranging from the Defense and State departments to the National Institutes of Health — are having second thoughts about moving government secrets and essential functions to the Web in the face of a growing number of cyberattacks from online assailants.

To the ranks of billion-dollar federal contracts for fighter jets and vaccine development, add cloud computing to the list of Uncle Sam’s most hotly contested procurements. The biggest names in the tech business are believed to be in the running for a piece of General Services Administration contracts capped at $2.5 billion to provide cloud-based email accounts for federal workers across departments.

Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced it has received Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) Moderate Authorization and Accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration. FISMA requires federal agencies to develop, document, and implement an information security system for its data and infrastructure.