Cloud Computing in Government Units

The paper contains a brief description of activities concerning the problem of Cloud Computing (CC) in government units in Poland, especially from the perspective of models of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Significant aspects of CC have been discussed, e.g.: using CC systems in Poland at present and legal aspects and limitations to the use of CC. It is assumed that CC may be useful to reduce the cost of developing and maintaining IT systems in public institutions. The research described is based on an extensive review to identify relevant studies published in literature recently. Examples of solutions resulting from them are characterized, and analyzed. It may be observed that, despite some advantages, CC systems are not in common use. Also, security issues in CC are an important element, taken into account by the authors of this paper. The main methods used in this study were interviews, observation, literature study on CC but the most important part of the article is a description of an analysis of CC systems available in Poland in public institutions and experiment conducted to test selected IaaS solutions. In addition, the work contains assumptions regarding further development of the models of CC in Poland and trends in this field especially in Business Intelligence (BI) in a CC context.