In June, Australian Government chief information officer, Anne Steward, pointed to the -- rather than issues of regulation -- as being one of the major reasons government agencies had yet to come up with a common federal Cloud strategy.

The same month HP Australia began gunning for public sector data in a big way with the -- a range of hybrid Cloud offerings including software as service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service and storage and database management.

Earlier in the year, Telstra said government departments at all levels had jumped at the chance to , with up to 10 individual agencies identified as potential clients.

The current regulatory regime has also not muffled the being either announced or built across the country during 2011.