DISA's development of the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE) cloud infrastructure is an example of a successful government cloud initiative, agrees Deniece Peterson, a federal industry analyst at Deltek, a Herndon, Va.-based enterprise software vendor whose customers include federal agencies and government contractors. Other successful cloud projects include the U.S. Army's deployment of Salesforce.com and the Customs and Border Protection agency's use of the cloud for its customer relationship management application, she adds.

This spring, the Army announced that it had completed the first phase of a migration of email services to the DISA cloud; officials estimate that the move will save $100 million annually.

Falling Behind

Fed CIOs Lag on 'Cloud First' Goals

Federal IT leaders are moving ahead with cloud computing projects, but it appears that many of them aren't moving as quickly as mandated by the "cloud first" policy, which requires CIOs to move one service to the cloud by the end of this year and two more by mid-2012. The "Federal Cloud Weather Report" published in April by MeriTalk, found the following: