The vendors say they can tackle security issues with their cloud services. Following the panel, Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Online, said he believes the company's would meet classified requirements, regardless of if it is in one of or one operated by a partner. The U.S. already uses private data center providers for some of its classified data processing, he pointed out.

Cloud platforms create opportunities for new kinds of threats, but they may also be harder for someone to develop an exploit for if less open than a server or desktop operating system, panelists said. Michael Nelson, a visiting professor of Internet studies at Georgetown University, said what may help cloud providers in developing secure platforms will be their ability to hire workers with an interest in the latest technologies and stock options, not running IT for a grocery chain.

One issue that could pose a problem for cloud providers may be the availability of bandwidth. Nicholas Carr, a panel moderator and author of a recent book on IT's role in the world titled The Big Switch , asked if with Web services' increase if the U.S. might become "bandwidth capacity constrained" and require businesses and government to prioritize certain traffic.

Markezich said bandwidth was a "real issue," but said an answer could be less bandwidth-intensive software. Client caching would help as well, he said. "This view that everything is going to be on the server and nothing is going to be on the client, I don't think is realistic for the world."

At least one federal government IT organization, the 's, has as its internal IT model. The agency adopted a cloud platform for internal use, in part to be make assembling information quickly for soldiers in the field. argued this summer that cloud technologies will be the future of military processing. "We have to get to this standard environment that is provisionable and scalable," he said in a recent interview.