well put sir
About time balanced pro and con discussion on cloud and supplying IT was done. Fail fast and cheap is an excellent concept as not enough testing is done, often due to cost and affordable access to kit. Definitely a good use for a bureau service, aka cloud.
Still the problem of cleanup of data on disks. I was often surprised by organisations that do not have sanitised data to test on. Often testing was done on real customer data copies which often means disk destruction is mandated. if the cloud providers can offer secure data wiping after the tests or project, their takeup for peak loads in the gov sector may increase at a minimal investment cost. Perhaps something as simple(?) as bit striping over encrypted volumes. Any security pundits have thoughts on this ?