Box Aims For Federal Government Data In The Cloud

Box’s star continues to rise after closing out 2011 with enormous growth among Fortune 500 companies, and now they have set their sights on major US federal government deployments.

The big difficulty in getting any government anywhere in the world into cloud computing is always the overblown security fear angle, and so any work being done by major players to address this issue benefits us all. If the US government starts making major use of such platforms, they become a powerful case study that can be pointed to by anyone pushing a cloud solution.

Box currently has a number of local and state government clients for cloud storage, and they note that government are essentially dealing with the same issues as enterprise players, and so this is a natural direction for Box to expand into. The $US70 Billion market for technology and software in government procurement is a massive opportunity for anyone able to convincingly address cloud security concerns, and while competitors are already working in the same space, Box’s rapid adoption among everyday as well as enterprise users makes this a development to watch.

Amazon have already launched their GovCloud, a private secure cloud solution specifically for government agencies, and IBM and HP recently won a $US250 million contract to create a private cloud. Not to be left out, Salesforce is also looking into public sector initiatives, so the next 12 months should prove very interesting for anyone watching cloud security developments. With luck, the work these companies are doing will provide the community with new security solutions and positive case studies to convince sceptical clients that the cloud is the way forward. None of this addresses Data Governance issues directly, but implementations will no doubt help to make that particular issue much more visible, especially in the American market.

Have you done any work on government cloud solutions? Had Data Governance or Cloud Security Issues? Tell us about it in the comments.