Federal government validates cloud computing

Last week, we surfaced the views of Michael Daconta, writing in Government Computer News, who cautioned government agencies from diving in too deep into new approaches to managing technology, such as cloud computing, SOA, and Agile development.

It looks like the folks over at the General Services Administration -- the purchasing arm of the federal government -- missed Daconta's article. As reported by Dave Linthicum in his latest blog post, the GSA has issued a request for quotation for cloud storage, Web hosting, and virtual machine services. (Dave cites an InformationWeek article.)

As Dave observes, the GSA RFQ shows "that the U.S. government is clearly getting behind cloud computing and, thus, is looking to provide a mechanism for validating and procuring cloud computing services for government agencies."