Jason Miller, Executive Editor, Federal News Radio: “The General Services Administration is about to give the Obama administration’s policy that requires agencies to use cloud computing a big boost. GSA plans on releasing a request for proposals May 10 for e-mail-as-a-service that could be worth $2.5 billion. Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, said Wednesday there are $20 billion in systems across the government that could move to the cloud, and email and collaboration software are among the easiest first steps. We already are seeing 15 agencies that have identified 950,000 e-mail boxes across 100 email systems that are going to move to the cloud,” he said during an update on the administration’s 25-point IT reform plan at the White House. “This represents a huge opportunity for [vendors] to aggressively compete for these new opportunities in the cloud space and provide the government with the best value and most innovative technologies.” Among those 15 agencies already on their way are the Agriculture Department and GSA. USDA is moving 120,000 employees to Microsoft’s cloud, while GSA picked Unisys, which partnered with Google, to move as many as 30,000 employees to a new email system.”