Cloud Computing Meets Washington

Last week I was invited to participate in a cloud computing panel at the Newseum, located smack dab between the U.S. Capitol Building and the White House. The Washington D.C. event marked the release of a new report, Envisioning the Cloud: The Next Computing Paradigm. I appeared with the two report authors, Jeffrey Rayport and Andrew Heyward. Rayport is a former Harvard Business School Professor who currently chairs Marketspace LLC, which provides digital strategy consulting services and is part of the high-end strategy consulting firm, The Monitor Group. (Rayport also coined the term "viral marketing.") Heyward, the former head of CBS News, serves as a senior advisor to Marketspace. My role was to provide commentary on their presentation of the report's findings.

The overall findings of the report echo its title. The authors conclude that cloud computing offers immense potential and predict that it will shake up many established markets-technology (obviously), but also content.

Something the report highlights is a potential tension between government policy and market competition. Essentially, the authors identify a number of key areas in which the cloud is rapidly evolving or requires sustaining capability: Cybercrime enforcement, universal connectivity, privacy, interoperability, etc. They range them on a continuum between government responsibility and market appropriateness (i.e., that the area is one in which the market, rather than the government, is the best place for the issue to be worked out). The report is an excellent overview of the domain and well-worth reading. Its elegantly crafted prose also recommends it as a senior management briefing tool.

Something that fascinated me was the attitude and receptiveness of the audience. Attendees were a mix: White House, Congressional, and Agency technology policy folks; social media consultants, a few technology development types, and a goodly representation of media. One thing was clear: even if policy folks are not especially tech-savvy, they're all aware of the concept of cloud computing and recognize that it has real promise.

After presenting the slides, during which I made some observations about cloud issues and opportunities, the floor was opened for questions. I would say that half of the questions revolved around data security and privacy. Many in the audience were familiar with current government laws and regulations relating to these issues, but have not yet begun to consider how cloud computing will impact them (Heyward commented that today's laws are based on a mid-80s computing environment).

What many in the audience were not familiar with, however, is the pace of cloud adoption. I pointed out that these issues relating to data are not prospective, they're in the here-and-now. Most troubling for cloud users are two things:

There is a great deal of uncertainty in how the circa-80s laws and regulations apply in a cloud computing environment. Consequently, it is difficult for individual companies to determine exactly what their responsibilities are with respect to data being placed in cloud environments. This has the inevitable effect of restricting cloud adoption, as many companies will choose to take a wait-and-see attitude, preferring to avoid taking steps that they may later find out are inappropriate, or, worse, put them into non-compliance with penalty-laden laws and regulations.