More Clarity Needed On Apps.gov Government Cloud

The federal government's rollout of Apps.gov promises to be a major advance in the way cloud computing helps change the way government embraces IT for efficiency and transparency. Announced earlier this week by federal CIO Vivek Kundra, Apps.gov is an online storefront -- a true app store -- through which cloud-centric vendors like Google and Salesforce.com can provide applications to agencies.

Apps.gov will be managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), and in comments made during the announcement at NASA's Ames Research Center Tuesday, Kundra played up the benefits of the cloud-app model as both a money saver for the federal government and an improvement in the way it uses online applications for business processes.

"By consolidating available services, Apps.gov is a one-stop source for cloud services -- an innovation that not only can change how IT operates but also save taxpayer dollars in the process," wrote Kundra in a blog post to the White House Web site.

The Apps.gov government cloud raises as many questions as answers, however, especially around the nature of "public" vs. "private" clouds and how agencies that already have existing Software-as-a-Service models will adapt to Apps.gov.

"Vivek was very complimentary of what NASA Ames has achieved and highlighted it will have its role in the government 'private' or 'community' cloud infrastructure," wrote Gartner analyst Andrea DiMaio in a Wednesday blog post discussing Apps.gov. "However, it is a fact that moving from acquiring new apps or external computing capacity that meet new requirements, to rationalizing existing workloads and balancing them across previously siloed infrastructures (currently managed through a variety of sourcing models) is a totally different challenge."

Among other observations, DiMaio urged the government to be more forthcoming with pricing information -- i.e., whether pricing will be monthly, per user or something else -- and make that information readily available to users.

She also questioned whether singling out Google and Salesforce.com in the announcement might be seen as an endorsement of those two vendors, even though Kundra mentioned during his Ames address that other vendors like Microsoft and Adobe would also have a presence in the Apps.gov store.