Sitting with the CEO of a $10 billion company. Talking cloud over cocktails. He’s sweating the move to the cloud. Security stress. I ask him what’s his company’s most important, strategic data. He doesn’t blink. Customer information. If we lost it, we’d be out of business. If we were compromised, we’d sue. I ask him if his salesforce uses Salesforce. Quick as a flash. Yep. I ask him if his competitors use Salesforce. Shrugs. Yep, pretty much everybody does.

 

Here’s the moment where the clouds part. If your most important, strategic data is already in the cloud – Salesforce – why’re you sweating the other stuff?

 

And, if Uncle Sam’s supposed to embrace private-sector best practices to drive IT efficiency, why aren’t agencies getting religion about cloud more quickly?

 

 

Pick your pew at the new MeriTalk Cloud Computing Exchange kick-off meeting, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on April 25. It’s where government IT execs focused on accelerating to the cloud preach the gospel. Box huggers – get thee behind me. Following the Exchange meeting, the congregation’s headed to the Capitol Visitors’ Center from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Your chance to join in the MeriTalk Cloud Computing Brainstorm, hosted with Senators Carper (D-Del.) and Brown (R-Mass.). Hear from Federal IT’s anointed high priests and cloud converts. If you’re into cloud, this promises to be a heavenly program.