Media Advisory: Carnegie Mellon’s Gregory Ganger to Testify in Washington about Benefits and Risks of Using Cloud Computing

June 29, 2010

Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776

Event: In testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement, Carnegie Mellon University's Gregory Ganger will discuss the benefits and risks of using cloud computing.

Ganger, head of Carnegie Mellon's Parallel Data Lab and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will say that cloud computing has the potential to provide large efficiency improvements for federal IT functions. Cloud computing involves using someone else's computers (and possibly software) to accomplish a task.

Ganger will recommend to federal officials that the government support both standardization and research/experimentation efforts in the pursuit of cloud computing's potential. He also will note that moving federal IT "to the cloud" will require significant technical and change management training for IT staff and managers as well as explicit information and effort sharing across a broad swath of federal agencies considering the use of cloud computing.

"Cloud computing is an exciting realization of a long-sought concept: computing as a utility. Pursuing judicious use for federal IT functions is important, given the large potential benefits," Ganger said.

Other witnesses invited to testify include: Vivek Kundra, federal chief information officer at the Office of Management and Budget; Casey Coleman, chief information officer at the U.S. General Services Administration; Cita Furlani, director of the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the Government Accountability Office; Scott Charney, corporate vice president of trustworthy computing at Microsoft Corporation; Daniel Burton, senior vice president of global public policy at Salesforce.com; and Mike Bradshaw, a director at Google Inc.

The hearing will be webcast on the committee's website: http://www.oversight.house.gov.

When: 10 a.m., Thursday, July 1.

Where: Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2154, Washington, D.C.