That would be David Bennett, CIO at the Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. Bennett acknowledged that "the cloud is a very viable scenario" for the feds, but he urges CIOs and other agency leaders to carefully consider which data sources and applications are suitable for a remotely hosted and managed environment.

"Everybody's looking at cloud as being the answer to all issues," Bennett says, "but we need to understand what it means to start to leverage the cloud as we go forward."

Bennett identifies many obstacles to the government's adoption of cloud technologies – perhaps none more important in his agency than the security concerns associated with turning sensitive processes over to a third-party provider.

"Are we going to take everything to the cloud?" he asks. "My sense of the game is no, we won't."

Instead, he envisions agencies scouring their applications and data assets to identify the "crown jewels" that "need to stay within the defensive perimeter."

"There's just some things we aren't going to put out in the commercial space," he says. "Do you really want nuclear command and control sitting out in the open?"

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