{"id":798,"date":"2014-10-22T05:28:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T05:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/industry\/blog\/uncategorized\/microsoft-embraces-an-open-cloud-for-digital-government\/"},"modified":"2023-05-31T16:31:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T23:31:24","slug":"microsoft-embraces-an-open-cloud-for-digital-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/government\/2014\/10\/22\/microsoft-embraces-an-open-cloud-for-digital-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Embraces an Open Cloud for Digital Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government\u2019s Cloud First strategy has identified some $20 billion in savings available as a result of moving traditional IT to cloud services. In light of this, and recognizing that the future of IT is in the cloud, the Federal government has begun to make some bold moves to advance a modernization agenda.<\/p>\n

This includes announcing the Digital Services Team<\/a>, a team that will work with government agencies to upgrade technology infrastructure and government websites, and establishing 18F, a group of experts focused on building and modernizing digital services in partnership with agencies, helping them better and more nimbly deliver on their important missions. Leaders at 18F<\/a> have already begun inviting American citizens and technology designers and developers<\/a> to improve the country\u2019s code base, and choosing the right platform is a large part of this optimization process.<\/p>\n

For agencies who are exploring a number of modernizations and moves to the cloud, it\u2019s important to focus on environments that support agile development, code reuse and allow the government to scale the innovations they\u2019ve created across all government agencies, without having to scale their workforce or invest in new applications.<\/p>\n

At Microsoft, we applaud this approach and our platform is designed with this open and agile model in mind. In fact, we\u2019ve been building on our code base in many of the same ways for years, and we are continually working to extend these capabilities across the larger ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Our goal is to enable anyone, from federal employees to private citizens, to engage, collaborate and innovate with government by being able to freely access and use open source tools. To deliver on this vision, we embrace code reuse and interoperability across a variety of open source, open standards and languages. We also offer flexible cloud services to governments to help enable openness and choice of technology.<\/p>\n

There are a number of ways Microsoft is actively committing to providing an optimal platform for an open and agile government. Here are a few proof points of our commitment to this strategy:<\/p>\n