During two recent public appearances, Vivek Kundra, federal chief information officer, highlighted the successful use of cloud computing by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to power two of the Federal government’s most high-profile websites, USA.gov and Data.gov. Both websites leverage the reliability and agility of Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud platform to provide critical government information to visitors from around the world.

During a news conference at NASA's Ames Research Center on September 15, Kundra discussed the GSA’s need to reduce costs while adding flexibility for the Federal government’s official website, USA.gov. The selection of Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud to power USA.gov resulted in a reduction of annual costs from $2.5 million to $800,000, a savings explicitly cited by Mr. Kundra, as well as providing the scalability to dynamically provision cloud computing resources within minutes instead of weeks. In addition, the agile computing infrastructure allows GSA to deploy upgrades to USA.gov in 24 hours instead of the 6 months typically required in a traditional model.

“The U.S. government’s cloud computing initiative will help drive many of the more than 10,000 IT systems run by Federal agencies to highly secure and reliable cloud computing solutions like the Enterprise Cloud,” said Bruce Hart, COO of Terremark Federal Group. “This initiative sets the stage for widespread adoption of cloud computing solutions for the IT infrastructure needs of Federal agencies, and Terremark is ideally positioned to offer these types of solutions based on our proven track record as the leading provider of cloud computing services for the Federal government.”

To view Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s full news conference, click here.