http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-collaboration/simple-and-powerful-headlines-info360-010643.php

Technology leaders with the Department of Energy, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and GSA will outline their next steps in cloud computing on June 15 at InformationWeek‘s Government IT Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C. With new implementations of infrastructure as a service and software as a service, including hosted apps from Google and Microsoft, the feds appear to be shifting aggressively into full-scale adoption of the cloud services model.

Read more:

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/federal_agencie.html

Last week I wrote about some broad trends causing major shifts in the ECM market (in “Could we be witnessing the end of ECM as we’ve known it“). Tony Byrne from Real Story Group reacted to my piece by saying I got the big pieces right, but I failed to account for what he called “prosaic document imaging/management/records management.” Interestingly enough, I was at the annual MIT CIO conference last week and spoke to Mark Forman, a partner from KPMG who consults with the federal government (and who was recently interviewed by sister-site FierceGovernmentIT). Forman said increasingly he’s seeing business processes, essentially document management functions, being done in the cloud, and he thinks it won’t be long before this is the norm.

Read more: Records management could be moving to the cloud – FierceContentManagement http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/records-management-could-be-moving-cloud/2010-05-24#ixzz0qQu92E46

Google Inc. has its head in a federal government cloud. The search engine giant wants to shift federal agencies from traditional desktop and server-based computing to so-called cloud computing, which relies on the web and outsourced remote file servers to deliver e-mail, send instant messages and share files. That shift ranges from software as a service and suites of applications — like Google Apps — to remote data storage.

Google hopes to win certification within weeks for its suite of products, a General Services Administration blessing of Google’s cloud computing security. That has huge implications: With its $75 billion IT budget — roughly 10 percent to 20 percent of all IT spending nationally — the federal government is the cumulonimbus of the cloud computing world.

Read more: Google a top contender in race to service feds – Washington Business Journal:

Customers who don’t see through the fakery will get stuck with old, expensive solutions

Lately, my phone and calendar are getting filled with calls from vendors who want to tell me all about their re-purposed, on-premise applications. The calls have a few familiar aspects but they’re all masquerades. And, mostly, they’re bad for software users.

First, the pattern:

An on-premise vendor, seeing softness in new license sales numbers, starts to (finally) realize that Software as a Service (SaaS) is real. So, the vendor decides that a ‘hosted’ ERP application is a close enough facsimile to a SaaS solution. All the hosted product needs is a bit of SaaS marketing and it’s a done deal. Right? Wrong!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/sommer/?p=831

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1347180

Most enterprises lack three essential ingredients to ensure that sensitive information stored in via cloud computing hosts remains secure: procedures, policies and tools. So says a joint survey called “Information Governance in the Cloud: A Study of IT Practitioners” from Symantec Corp. and Ponemon Institute.

“Cloud computing holds a great deal of promise as a tool for providing many essential business services, but our study reveals a disturbing lack of concern for the security of sensitive corporate and personal information as companies rush to join in on the trend,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute.

http://lawyerist.com/can-you-trust-google-apps-and-other-saas/

Cloud computing, or software as a service (SaaS), means moving your applications from your computer to the “cloud.” It is the difference between Microsoft Word (locally-hosted, since it is on your computer) and Google Docs (remotely-hosted, since it is on Google’s computers).

The most-common objection to using SaaS is the fear of waiving the attorney-client privilege, usually because “free” e-mail services like Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail scan users’ e-mail for keywords to target advertising. But SaaS is an attractive alternative for many lawyers, who would rather not deal with IT themselves or maintain an expensive IT consultant. As a result, many lawyers and law firms are looking at Google Apps, hosted Exchange, and Zimbra as less-expensive alternatives to having a local server.

I use Google Apps, and I am not worried about security, privacy, or waiving the attorney-client privilege. Here is why:

You and your clients are already using SaaS

If you use e-mail, you are probably using SaaS, even though you may not realize it.

First, many—perhaps most—of your clients are already using cloud services like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail. These are SaaS providers that scan your clients’ messages—including the ones from you—to provide relevant advertising. Whether or not you use SaaS yourself, if the attorney-client privilege was so easily waived, you would probably have waived it already for many of your communications.

Second, you are also probably using SaaS yourself. Have a Blackberry, iPhone, or any other mobile messaging device? That information is going through the servers of RIM, Apple, or whoever, where third parties have access to it. If you are like most law firms, you have a hosted e-mail provider like Comcast, A2, or GoDaddy, where third parties also have access to your e-mail. They may not scan it for advertising, but their computers store it, just like Google’s.

But don’t worry . . .

http://lawyerist.com/can-you-trust-google-apps-and-other-saas/

So, just what the heck is Google Apps?

Is it a collection of slick tools that appeal to users, but fall a little short for rigorous enterprise use? Or is it an engaging set of services that not only enables, but encourages employees to collaborate in a variety of contexts?

The answer is probably a little of both.

In a Burton Group report on the potential of Google Apps in the enterprise, published last April, author Guy Creese notes that it isn’t clear whether Apps is intended primarily for collaboration, content management or communication. While it contains elements of all three, says Creese, none of its features are robust enough to make Apps a replacement for products typically used by enterprises.

For instance, while the premier edition of Apps supports archiving and management of e-mail, thanks to Google’s purchase of e-mail security specialist Postini in 2007, there is no built-in functionality for archiving and managing documents such as spreadsheets, a key requirement for companies concerned about compliance requirements or potential litigation. The absence of such functionality might be a deal-breaker for companies hoping to employ Apps for content management, says Creese. While he praises Apps’ clean and easy-to-use interface, he believes these kinds of functionality gaps show Google is still grappling with producing solutions that satisfy enterprise needs.

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/community/features/articles/blog/is-google-apps-good-enough-for-the-enterprise/?cs=30067

Last week during its weekly meeting, the NCOIC Cloud Computing Working Group (CCWG) examined some of the legal aspects surrounding electronically stored information. With government use of cloud computing expected to grow, the group reach out to Mr. Jason R. Baron, Director of Litigation for the United States National Archives and Records Administration for some guidance. Mr. Baron is an internationally recognized speaker and author on the preservation of electronic records.  In 2009 he was named Co-Chair of The Sedona Conference® Working Group on Electronic Document Retention and Production, and has previously served as Editor-in-Chief of The Sedona Conference Best Practices Commentary on the Use of Search and Information Retrieval Methods in E-Discovery (2007), and Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Sedona Conference Commentary on Achieving Quality in the E-Discovery Process (2009).

In case you didn’t know, the US Federal Records Act requires the taking of appropriate preservation measures for all electronically stored information that falls within the federal record definition outlined in 44 USC 3301. With this in mind, potential federal records “in the cloud” could include:

* Google Docs
* Gmail
* Facebook, Twitter and YouTube postings
* Email and structured databases of all kinds hosted on private servers; and
* PDA text messages

http://kevinljackson.blogspot.com/2010/03/ncoic-discusses-e-discovery-and-cloud.html

This text is anything but an anti-Microsoft pamphlet. It’s an analysis — cold, objective and financial — of the potential impacts of the Cloud Computing Tsunami on the finances of Microsoft.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=1014