Cloud Computing for Continuity of Operations (COOP)

EITAGlobal and Cloud Expert Kevin L. Jackson Team To Deliver Business Focused Cloud Computing Training

By G C Network | December 9, 2013

Today I am announcing my partnership with EITAGlobal to produce and deliver a series of business focused training webinars on cloud computing. Headquartered in Fremont, California, EITAGlobal is a continuing professional…

NRRC Video Series – Video 6 : Telos Demonstrates Cloud-based Communications System

By G C Network | December 8, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration. Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

NRRC Video Series – Video 5 : Boeing Ozone Dashboards for Emergency Management

By G C Network | December 7, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration. Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

Proud To Be Joining Veterans 360 and Cloud for Vets!

By G C Network | December 5, 2013

Today I’m proud and honored to announce my appointment to the Board of Advisors for Veterans 360. Their mission is to provide young, recently-separated combat veterans with a program of…

Take Charge, Lead Change, Do Cloud Right!

By G C Network | December 4, 2013

The theme for next week’s Gartner Data Center conference, “Taking Charge, Leading Change — Your I&O Transformation Can’t Wait”, is a real wake up call for today’s I&O leaders. Gartner’s…

Cloud Computing at the Potomac Officer’s Club

By G C Network | November 27, 2013

Across the Federal IT landscape, terms like “cloud”, “cloud computing” and Software as a service (SaaS) are at the center of a seismic shift by the agencies away from building…

NRRC Video Series – Video 2 : Building the Cloud Infrastructure

By G C Network | November 26, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration.  Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

NRRC Video Series – Video 1 : Introduction and Overview

By G C Network | November 25, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration.  Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

NCOIC To Rollout Open Process for Creating Secure, Hybrid IT Computing Environments

By G C Network | November 20, 2013

Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium to offer capability to organizations that seek to combine traditional and cloud infrastructures for greater efficiency and mission success WASHINGTON-November 19, 2013-Next month, the Network…

So what kind of consultant are you?

By G C Network | November 15, 2013

Yesterday over lunch, a good friend of mine from the Limelight Marketing Group and I started talking about my recent transition. As you can imagine being in the DC metro…

Recently, I’ve been focusing on cloud computing for COOP. The way I looked at it, many government agencies are already using commercial shared facilities as COOP sites and that the cloud simply represented a virtual shared facility. Although there are still many security, privacy and policy issues that need to be addressed, it seems to me that cloud computing could still provide a cost effective and efficient COOP capability for certain operational and mission subsets.

A major key to success would be in the identification of which non-critical applications and infrastructure resources an agency could migrate to a cloud platform. By definition, these would be resources the agency could go without for two days. In general, applications, storage and server resources related to ad-hoc projects, research and development efforts, and certain peak-time requirements could clearly be considered.

To ensure operational and contractual flexibility, only solutions that could work across multiple cloud infrastructures should be considered. Many commercial vendors can provide multi-cloud support for continuity of operations requirements, including:

After appropriate technical and cost/benefit trades, vendors could be selected and SLAs negotiated. Pending agencies policy reviews and appropriate contracting vehicles, cloud-based COOP could then be put in place.

Is this a valid approach? Are their alternatives? As always, your suggestions and recommendations are welcomed.

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G C Network