To drive government agencies to the Cloud and keeping America at the forefront of Cloud innovation, the TechAmerica Foundation  has released the highly anticipated guide for the government with recommendations from the Commission on the leadership opportunity in U.S. deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2). To help the federal government adopt cloud computing technologies and the necessary policy incentives needed to keep the U.S. on the innovation forefront of cloud computing, the Commision has created a detailed guidance, led by salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff and VCE chairman and CEO Michael D. Capellas.

“Today’s recommendations by the commission will help further accelerate adoption of cloud computing within the government infrastructure”, said Michael Capellas, chairman and CEO, VCE and the Commission’s Co-chair, in a statement. He added, “Faster adoption of cloud computing will strengthen the United States’ leadership position in the global marketplace and ignite creation of jobs that will be in high demand over the next decade.”

Similarly, commented Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com and the Commission’s co-chair, “The debate around cloud computing is over – everyone agrees the shift to the cloud is inevitable. The Cloud First Buyers Guide for Government provides the best practices for how agencies can evaluate and deploy cloud services, helping them make huge gains in productivity and efficiency,” noted Benioff.

The Commission’s Cloud First Buyers Guide for Government was developed to assist government agencies as they evaluate and purchase cloud services and solutions.

The 14 recommendations focus on four vitally important areas to cloud computing:

•    Trust – individuals and organizations must be confident that the cloud can meet their needs including security, privacy and availability.

•    Transnational Data Flows – the cloud is not defined by national borders; businesses and data flow across international borders and the United States must lead by example in dealing with these challenges, ensuring the full realization of the cloud capabilities.

•    Transparency- cloud providers will earn confidence from corporate America and government agencies by providing users meaningful ways to evaluate cloud implementations and for vendors to share relevant and reliable information about their capabilities to build trust in the system.

•    Transformation – for full adoption of the cloud, there must be a change in how the federal government acquires technology; an investment in improving technology infrastructure including expediting broadband deployment and the move to IPv6; a commitment to ensuring that education and training priorities align with the needs of a cloud workforce; and creating incentives to encourage the global development and adoption of cloud technologies.

“We brought together 71 of the greatest cloud thinkers in our country to develop the blueprint to continue American leadership in cloud computing and what they’ve created will set the pace for the rest of the world,” said Phil Bond, president and CEO of TechAmerca and member of the TechAmerica Foundation board. “The Commission has delivered that blueprint to the Administration and Congress and we are committed to working with them to make it a reality,” stated Bond.