"This is a paradigm shift," says Shawn Kingsberry, CIO at the federal Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and a proponent of cloud computing.

Kingsberry considers this a unique point in IT history, akin to the late 1990s, when IT departments went through drastic upgrades during the run-up to . Today, dwindling dollars and a shrinking workforce are forcing IT leaders to once again think big. "Now you have a perfect situation where the stars are aligned to make massive change," he says. "When you look at what this means, federal government has the opportunity to make moves forward."

Kingsberry's agency moved its Recovery.gov website to in April 2010. He says the agency decided to make the leap after successfully using the cloud for testing, although IT leaders at the agency still performed a rigorous analysis before making the move. They considered, among other factors, how cloud computing would fare in terms of performance, cost and security.

Security First

Classified Data? Not in the Cloud