Web commerce giant Amazon is apparently building a cloud-computing network for the CIA. Trade publication Federal Computer Week has reported that the agency will pay the online retail pioneer up to $600 million to develop its own private cloud over the next decade. This would make plenty of sense. Amazon is well-known for providing cloud-computing services to the private sector, and government agencies dealing with classified information are pushing to adopt cloud services as a way of consolidating thousands of network "enclaves" that are hard to defend. The Pentagon, for example, is building what it says will be a defendable, upgradable network, known as the Joint Information Environment. While the CIA declined to comment to FCW about the project, an agency official revealed in a public forum that Langley is adopting commercial software in order to keep up with the pace of innovation in the private sector.

Speaking to the Northern Virginia Technology Council Board of Directors on March 12, Central Intelligence Agency Chief Information Officer Jeanne Tisinger told an audience of several dozen people how the CIA is leveraging the commercial sector's innovation cycle, looking for cost efficiencies in commodity IT, and using software-as-a-service for common solutions.

Two audience members who asked not to be named told FCW that Tisinger said the CIA was working "with companies like Amazon."