On its surface, cloud computing is a no-brainer. It’s a model for delivering corporate technology in a way that contains costs, reduces the environmental footprint of data centers, and makes powerful business applications readily available on an anytime, anywhere basis. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t significant considerations, such as security and privacy, that an organization should take into account when looking to transition to the cloud.
This is why the government of The Netherlands is being careful to perform due diligence before proceeding with plans to introduce cloud computing into its environment. ICTU, the Dutch agency that oversees the implementation of information and communications technologies, is currently investigating cloud computing, and determining its potential role in delivering E-government.
Since early 2010, ICTU has been turning over every rock—from researching vendors to analyzing legal risks—in an effort to fully understand what its cloud computing options are, get a handle on the associated costs, set realistic expectations, and make sure that the potential business implications of moving into the cloud are perfectly clear. The effort, says ICTU advisor Paul Suijkerbuijk, has been spurred by two things: the desire to lower data center costs, and a steady stream of suggestions from vendors that it’s time for the Dutch government to consider cloud computing.
The cloud also has become a more interesting option because of ICTU’s efforts on another front: It’s rebuilding the Dutch government’s main web site, which will make it easier for citizenry to log in and access personal information, as well as more general information about nationwide services. And it’s approaching the site modularly, developing building blocks—such as storage and search—that can easily be combined in an interoperable cloud environment. A cloud-enabled E-government site would simplify the delivery of a wide range of applications available as subscription-based services, thus reducing ICTU’s development workload.
That’s not all. Suijkerbuijk says that in the future the cloud also could be used to deliver business applications to civil servants, as well as to run some of the primary business process environments on which governmental departments rely. The cloud strategy, once adopted, is likely to start with the E-government initiative, then move on to civil servant computing resources before tackling the more unwieldy business process environments. “The bigger the system you have to move into the cloud, the more difficult it is,” he says.
Establishing a greener IT operation that minimizes power and cooling needs also is a factor, although Suijkerbuijk says that it’s proving difficult to quantify the real gains organizations realize in this area as they move from traditional hosting models to the cloud.
But all of these things take a back seat initially to another consideration: Unlike organizations in America that have been moving full-steam-ahead on cloud deployments, ICTU and other European entities exploring the cloud face a unique set of privacy-related challenges.
“In the U.S., it’s easier to put something in the cloud,” says Suijkerbuijk. “American companies are hosting these clouds, and it’s quite obvious that data stored in the cloud is also in America. These same companies are offering their services in Europe, storing data in the U.S, and we’re not allowed to store governmental or personal data in foreign countries.”
As a result, ICTU is exploring the possibility of spearheading government-wide cloud efforts that would store data within the boundaries of The Netherlands, enabling it to make something like Google Docs available to Dutch government workers. If that proves impossible, there’s a chance ICTU could find itself developing a similar type of productivity application suite itself, as there is no Dutch equivalent to Google Docs.
The idea of a government-wide cloud, or of an ICTU-built version of Google Docs, speaks directly to what Suijkerbuijk believes is one of the greatest opportunities to put the cloud into action in The Netherlands: namely, working together. Many Dutch governmental entities, including 400 cities, are investigating cloud computing, and while none are obliged to be part of a standardized government cloud, a joint effort would help everyone, Suijkerbuijk says.
In lieu of that cooperation, Suijkerbuijk has some advice for other Dutch organizations trying to justify cloud investments. He suggests that instead of focusing on the anticipated cost savings and environmental improvements, they should look at the expected impact on application development and functionality, which could be even more dramatic. This also speaks more to the inevitability of the cloud; it’s not so much a matter of whether the Dutch government will move into the cloud, but rather how far.
That inevitability is why Suijkerbuijk’s focus has been on heading up development of a cloud computing innovation centre that’s expected to be operational by the end of 2010. The center will serve as a cloud testing environment where Dutch agencies can try out applications and get help with their first steps into the cloud.
Once the innovation centre is open, says Suijkerbuijk, “We will start developing building blocks and offer cloud services as soon as possible.”