U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said he believes cloud use could allow governments to "reduce their massive taxpayer-funded IT budgets" by migrating some workloads to cloud providers.

But Quayle, at a hearing on today, also noted that broadband networks would need to be "up to the task of handling the massive amounts of data" that will be transmitted.

Quayle, who heads the House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, assembled a panel of IT executives for advice on the types of things the government should and shouldn't do to facilitate cloud deployment.

Dan Reed, vice president of Microsoft's Technology Policy Group, said more investment is needed to build networks that can support higher data rates. Reed said there is a mismatch in the ability of networks to handle information and the amount of information cloud providers can actually deliver.

He went on to encourage basic research spending in several areas such as improving current data rates and on high bandwidth data sharing over wireless spectrum.