Next Week: Cloud Computing Storefront

You may have seen reports today regarding a major announcement next week from federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra on the government's cloud computing initiative. The source of most of those reports is this release from NASA's Ames Research Center in California, which says only that Kundra "will outline his vision for a new federal government cloud computing initiative". As the home of NASA's cloud computing initiative (cleverly dubbed "Nebula"), Ames seems like a natural choice to reveal the government's new cloud strategy.

Nextgov has confirmed that the event next week will include the unveiling of the cloud computing storefront Kundra first mentioned in July. The site will initially only include cloud services and offerings from vendors currently on GSA's Schedules program. However, the agency is actively working with technology companies like Amazon.com that don't normally sell to government to help simplify the process of joining the Schedules.

The initial offerings mostly will be limited to offices and applications without major privacy restrictions (aka not HHS or Social Security) due to security concerns, but eventually GSA hopes to leverage the clouds created by agencies like NASA and DISA to provide secure cloud solutions contained entirely within the government.

We'll be bringing you much more on this topic next week including the actual announcement itself, so stay tuned for updates.