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While the general perception is that a cloud is a cloud, that won't be the case for government agencies. Experts revealed more specifics about federal, state and local migration to cloud computing during the first panel at AFCEA International's Homeland Security Conference.

A recently released draft plan provides a road map for federal agencies and industry to navigate through the development of the cloud-computing model.

The U.S. Defense Department is aggressively pursuing cloud-computing options in the midst of budget cuts and personnel reductions. Pilot programs are in place around the uniformed services, experimenting with ways to enhance efficiency while ensuring security.

A variation of cloud computing one day could lead to the benefits of the cloud being extended to troops on the battlefield, or to humanitarian relief workers, no matter where they operate. These microclouds would be generated by small computer servers running on devices as small as a high-capacity universal serial bus thumb drive attached to a laptop computer.

The U.S. government has released a road map to cloud computing that is designed to tackle some key issues, establish priorities and provide a clear path for government agencies and industry. The draft publication defines high-priority requirements for standards, official guidance and technology developments that need to be met for agencies to accelerate their migration of existing information technology systems to the cloud computing model.

From securing the cloud to unwrapping new architecture compliance requirements, 2011 was a busy year for the tech public sector. In the New Year's spirit of renewal and rededication, here are 5 resolutions federal agencies should make.

International Business Machines Corporation, Global Government Industry, Bethesda, Maryland, is being awarded a $12,171,809 firm-fixed-price and cost-reimbursement contract for Enterprise Information

Telcordia Technologies Incorporated of Piscataway, New Jersey, is being awarded a $7,111,956 cost plus fixed fee contract to research, develop, test, and deploy the Autonomous Collaborative Control fo

SRI International of Menlo Park, California, is being awarded a $7,491,195 cost plus fixed fee contract to be a companion program to the existing Clean-slate design of resilient, adaptive, secure host

According to the author of this year's second-to-last installment on cloud computing, it would behoove the U.S. Defense Department to take a pass on its past approach to enterprise architecture, and instead focus on PaaS-platform-as-a-service-cloud computing.