Washington, D.C. to become Googlized

Google secured a coveted security clearance, which is the first cloud computing app suite to receive the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification. This means Google’s system is now considered reliable for handling non-classified government data. 

Sure! remember  Street View privacy fiasco when Google admitted of an embarrassing privacy gaffe sniffing wireless networking data?

The security clearance process has certainly changed since late 90’s when I went through the same process for my clearance working on our Predator. I can’t imagine how Google pulled this off.

As I mentioned, this is the first time our government has certified a bundle of software programs delivered over the INTERNET, a new concept known as “cloud computing” I have been covering past year or so. That being said, Google can now sell its e-mail and other Web-hosted applications to a wider range of government agencies.

Google has been trying to promote cloud computing as a way for businesses and government agencies to reduce their technology expenses. At the same time, Google is hoping to reduce its financial dependence on Internet advertising, which generated virtually all of its $13.6 billion in revenue during the first half of this year. This will make it easier for government agencies or groups to evaluate and adopt Google Apps.

I wonder how the Billions for the new training on Google products will come to the equation? Not to mention Billions already spent on Microsoft products training all these years.

Google Apps has already landed a few big customers in the public sector — including a five-year deal with the City of Los Angeles in which it outbid Microsoft. Berkeley Labs, part of the Department of Energy, started using Google Apps earlier this year; more than 4,000 employees and 1,000 research partners are using Google Docs & Sites to collaborate there, and 4,000 are using Google Mail. Larimer County in Colorado has also started using Google Apps for Government.

The announcement and product is a big step for Google and having a formal government offering will certainly make the company more visible in the space. Google’s competitors including Microsoft, whose Office suite of e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and other programs is widely used by government agencies and businesses,  haven’t been sitting idle. While Google can often undercut its competitors on price, security and reliability are two factors that matter more to many government users.

So… this will be our government’s new symbol then

I guess I was just ten years a head of time back in 1999 when I tried to take the entire telecom sector to the cloud with my telezoo.com. Given the rise of the cloud, perhaps, it’s time to re-launch it again.

Telezoo was the social networking site that allowed the telecom and IT folks to connect and conduct commerce – 5 years before the myspace and facebook of the world.

. The telecom and networking solution providers simply entered their solution’s specs via the web into their telezoo account in the cloud,

. Telezoo platform normalized their specs and stacked them up against each other

. The IT buyers simply typed in their requirements and would get an apple to apple comparison of the solution offerings by various vendors and then, connect with the companies – all in the cloud.

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