Cloud computing - cultural impact?

Here, a report suggests the US Government is to actively pursue a 'cloud-first' strategy...
  

The US federal government will soon adopt a "cloud-first" policy, meaning federal agencies will be required to used cloud services "whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists." The announcement came last week from Jeffrey Zients, the government's first chief performance officer. According to the Washington Post, the new policy is part of a broader government initiative to "fix IT."

Thanks to readwriteweb for this.

I have thought for some time that cloud computing will be beneficial to our industry.  At the same time of course, it poses new risks to many of our clients...

Now, this might seem a little simplistic but I don't think the biggest benefits to us will be those most often touted by cloud computing providers - lower capital costs, pay for use, flexibility etc. - as valuable as those benefits will be.   Even the availability of shared information, enabling collaboration is not the key benefit, though I expect we will make very considerable use of this feature.

I think the biggest benefit will be cultural - see 'Tweet This' to understand why I think this is so important. 

Carefully presented, the simple idea that our data and applications will somehow be above us, with a broader and wider view of the landscape in which we operate than we can typically see from the trenches of our everyday work, will help undermine our silo mentality.  It will also make clear that the collaborative processes we use today are very limited compared to what will soon become more evident.