Cloud Computing vs. Cloud Services

NCOIC Discusses e-Discovery and Cloud Computing

By G C Network | March 22, 2010

Last week during its weekly meeting, the NCOIC Cloud Computing Working Group (CCWG) examined some of the legal aspects surrounding electronically stored information. With government use of cloud computing expected…

Take the survey, get a book!

By G C Network | March 20, 2010

“Cloud Musings”, in cooperation with Aditya Yadav & Associates, is conducting a new cloud computing survey. This short, eight (8) question poll, is designed to gauge general corporate plans around…

Army Knowledge Leaders Study Cloud Computing

By G C Network | March 12, 2010

This week it was my pleasure to explore cloud computing with Army Knowledge Leaders (AKL) ! AKL is an intensive 2 year experience of training and work rotations designed to develop leadership,…

Northrop Grumman & Lockheed Martin Selected for CANES

By G C Network | March 9, 2010

   Last week the US Navy awarded initial CANES contracts to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Navy officials place the contract values at $775M for Northrop and $937M for Lockheed.…

NCOIC Analyses Cloud Computing With SCOPE

By G C Network | February 24, 2010

Last week, the Network Centric Operations Consortium (NCOIC) Cloud Computing Working Group (CCWG) started it’s work on cloud interoperability in earnest. The first step in their process is the completion…

TASER Awarded: The NGA ASP/ISP Transition Contract

By G C Network | February 17, 2010

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded the Total Application Services for Enterprise Requirements (TASER) contract to: Accenture National Security Services, LLC BAE Systems Information Technology, Inc. The Boeing Company-Autometric,…

EuroCloud Expands Quickly

By G C Network | February 16, 2010

Last October I introduced EuroCloud as a pan-European business network with the goal of promoting European use of cloud computing.  In the intervening three months, the organization has grown to…

Joining NJVC: A Professional Plateau

By G C Network | February 8, 2010

This week I begin a new and exciting phase of my professional career by joining the NJVC Enterprise Management Team! For those unfamiliar, NJVC is one of the largest information…

DoD Deputy CIO on Secure Information Sharing

By G C Network | February 3, 2010

Today on Federal Executive Forum, Dave Wennergren, Deputy CIO, Office of the Secretary of Defense, shared his views on secure information sharing. Mr. David M. Wennergren serves as the Deputy…

Training Conference: Cloud Computing for DoD & Government

By G C Network | February 1, 2010

Please join me at the Cloud Computing for DoD & Government training conference, February 22-24, 2010 at the Hilton Old Town in Alexandria, VA. This unique conference agenda blends interactive…

In September, Frank Gens provided an excellent overview of the the new “Cloud Computing Era”. In preparing for an upcoming talk, I re-read the post and found myself appreciating it even more. His description of “cloud computing” and “cloud services” really highlights the difference between the commercial cloud computing market and the Federal cloud computing market.

(Paraphrased from Frank Gens’ article)

When people talk about “cloud computing”, they are usually referring to things like software-as-a-service (SaaS) and storage or server capacity as a service. They may also talk about the many “non-IT” business and consumer services like shopping, banking, selling, collaborating, communicating and being entertained. In reality, these things represent an on-line delivery and consumption model for business and consumer services. These users are not explicitly buying “cloud computing”, but the “cloud services” that are enabled by cloud computing environments. Cloud computing is actually the emerging IT development, deployment and delivery model that enables real-time delivery of products, services and solutions over the Internet.

Federal government customers do use the Internet, but the vast majority of their business is done using private internets. In the DoD, for instance, we call these private networks NIPRnet, SIPRnet and JWICS. These customers are, however, very interested in learning about how emerging cloud computing models can be used within and between all of these networks.

The epiphany here is that, for the most part, the commercial cloud computing market is about making money providing cloud services while the Federal marketplace is about making money helping Federal customers design and build cloud computing infrastructures.

I may be oversimplifying this, but I welcome your thoughts.

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network

3 Comments

  1. Sam Johnston on November 26, 2008 at 11:29 am

    Hi Kevin,

    You’ve touched on a number of different points here, but the gist of the story is that cloud computing is somehow different from cloud services. I would say that cloud services are in fact one type of cloud computing (ie services that just ‘exist’ like a skyhook), and that infrastructure, storage, platforms, applications and clients are others (as I have documented at wikipedia).

    Note that while carefully slicing and dicing through the cloud computing space I’ve tried to create useful partitions between segments both by attacking it academically (what functions are required in a complete cloud architecture?) as well as through trial and error (a hardware segment doesn’t really make sense for example).

    Anyway if there is a line to be drawn then there should be some value in drawing it. I don’t see why the fed should benefit any less from other segments, nor why they would be inordinately more interested in infrastructure.

    Thanks for your efforts with this blog btw, makes for an interesting read.

    Cheers,

    Sam



  2. CloudComputingExpert on December 25, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    Kevin,

    How about moving all your posts to a real domain website like cloudczar.com?

    Just a thought to get your articles more visible.

    Good reading.
    Thanks and have a good X-Mas
    Chris



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