Cloud computing is currently one of the biggest trends in the information technology (IT) industry. Over the past several years, cloud computing has gained significant momentum to be the cost effective and efficient alternative to managing in-house software applications and hardware systems. The impact that cloud computing has had on business is so great that the United States Government is now looking to the cloud as a means to reorganize its IT infrastructure and to decrease its spending budgets. With top government officials mandating cloud adoption, many agencies already have at least one cloud system online.
This report discusses what cloud computing is and how the government is utilizing this technology. The final section of this report is a case study that is a detailed account of migrating an existing application to the Microsoft Azure cloud environment. The actual implementation of the migration and the issues found are discussed.