Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting at the Sys-con International Cloud Computing Expo in New York City. My presentation, The View from Government Cloud Computing Customers, reviewed findings from the second Government Cloud Computing Survey. Sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton, 1105 Media and Dataline, LLC , the purpose of this survey was to validate finding of the October 2008 survey and to see if the significant trends noted then had changed. Here are some of the highlights from the survey.

As expected, the respondents were mostly from the Federal government with 51% admitting that they new nothing about cloud computing. Industry respondent were clearly focused on the cloud with 66% claiming that they were very familiar with the topic. 

As in the earlier survey, datacenter and capital budget limitations seemed to be the driving force behind the government's interest in cloud computing.

As shown in the earlier survey, security remains the number one concern among these prospective cloud users.

Key survey conclusions were:

• Federal government organizations exhibit the greatest level of interest in cloud computing although respondents indicate a lack of familiarity with the technology
• Blog visitor statistics suggests a significant increase in interest from government and military organizations
• The NCOIC  considers the emergence of cloud computing as an important development  worthy of focus investigation on behalf of it’s Government and Industry members
• Leading drivers are consistent. Capital budget limitations and datacenter limitations
• Cloud Computing Security remains the dominant concern
  

Although the survey didn't uncover any real surprises, it did reinforce a perception that cloud computing represents a very important focus of current government IT conversations.

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