[gentoo-user] OT: I want to get excited, but I just *know* they're going to mess it up...

[Stroller]

UK cloud computing strategy could save up to £3.2bn a year, says  
Cabinet Office.

    The government has unveiled a sweeping strategy to create
    its own internal "cloud computing" system – such as that
    used by Google, Microsoft and Amazon – as part of a radical
    plan that it claims could save up to £3.2bn a year from an
    annual bill of at least £16bn.

    The key part of the new strategy, outlined by the Cabinet
    Office minister Angela Smith, will be the concentration of
    government computing power into a series of about a dozen
    highly secure data centres, each costing up to £250m to
    build, which will replace more than 500 presently used by
    central government, police forces and local authorities.

    The government will also push for "open source" software to
    be used more widely among central and local government's 4m
    desktop computers. That poses an immediate threat to
    Microsoft, whose Windows operating system and Office
    applications suite is at present firmly embedded as the
    standard on PCs in government, such as the NHS, which is one
    of the largest users in Europe.

    But John Suffolk, the government's chief information
    officer, pointed out that cost savings of just £100 per
    machine would total £400m across government. Unlike Windows,
    open source operating systems such as Linux have no
    licensing costs and can be used on as many machines as
    required.

    By 2015, the strategy suggests, 80% of central government
    desktops could be supplied through a "shared utility
    service" – essentially a cloud service resembling Google
    Docs, which lets people create documents online for free.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/27/cloud-computing-government-uk