Federal Cloud Computing Strategy Officially Launched

NJVC to Spotlight Cloudcuity at Gartner Data Center Conference

By G C Network | November 15, 2012

Las Vegas., Nov. 15, 2012 — NJVC, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, announces it will spotlight its Cloudcuity™ framework for delivering secure and unified cloud management…

NJVC Cloud Expert Kevin L. Jackson Launches Second Book: GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services

By G C Network | November 9, 2012

VIENNA, Va., Nov. 8, 2012—NJVC, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in northern Virginia, is pleased to announce that Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, cloud services,…

Virtustream a Visionary in Gartner 2012 IaaS Magic Quadrant

By G C Network | October 27, 2012

Congratulations to NJVC Cloudcuity partner Virtustream for being positioned as a visionary in the Gartner 2012 IaaS Magic Quadrant! Magic Quadrants provide a graphical competitive positioning of four types of…

GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services Now Available

By G C Network | October 22, 2012

I’m happy and proud to announce the release of my second book, “GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services” by my publisher Government Training Inc.   The public and private…

NJVC® Introduces Cloudcuity™ AppDeployer to Create and Sell Software Applications

By G C Network | October 18, 2012

Developers Can Create, Deploy and Publish Apps in the Cloud for Free Vienna, Va., Oct. 18, 2012 — NJVC®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces…

NJVC® Announces the Cloudcuity™ Government Marketplace, Powered by Virtustream’s Secure Cloud xChange

By G C Network | October 4, 2012

Vienna, Va., Oct. 4, 2012—NJVC®, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, and Virtustream, Inc., a leading enterprise cloud software company, today announced a new alliance to provide…

Cloudcuity™: Thought Leadership Translated to Operational Excellence

By G C Network | September 26, 2012

As my long time readers have certainly noticed, the frequency of my posts have lengthened over the past few months. First, I would like to offer my apologies for being…

NJVC® Unveils Cloudcuity™ Umbrella Framework for NJVC Cloud Services

By G C Network | September 13, 2012

Vienna, Va., Sept. 13, 2012 — NJVC®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces Cloudcuity™, a new framework for the company’s cloud service offerings to help…

NJVC® Announces SaaS Accelerate: Specialized Infrastructure Hosting and Managed Services Program for Software-as-a-Service Providers

By G C Network | August 25, 2012

VIENNA, Va., Aug. 15, 2012 —NJVC® announces the release of NJVC SaaS Accelerate, a specialized infrastructure hosting and managed services offering designed to support the business needs of software-as-a-service (SaaS)…

Texas Cloud Computing Lessons Learned

By G C Network | August 12, 2012

Late last week  the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) released an important whitepaper that reviewed it’s multi-year Pilot Texas Cloud Offering (PTCO). This project was designed to allow a…

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra officially launched the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy today. While this is clearly not new news, the document does state the government’s position in a very succint manner.

  • By using the cloud computing model for IT services, we will be able to reduce our data center infrastructure expenditure by approximately 30% (which contributes to the estimated $20 billion of IT spending that could be migrated to cloud computing solutions).
  • Cloud computing can complement data center consolidation efforts by shifting workloads and applications to infrastructures owned and operated by third parties.
  • The shift to cloud computing can help to mitigate the fragmented data, application, and infrastructure silo issues associated with federated organizational and funding models by focusing on IT services as a utility.
  • Cloud computing can accelerate data center consolidation efforts by reducing the number of applications hosted within government-owned data centers.
Cloud computing allows the Federal Government to use its IT investments in a more innovative way and to more easily adopt innovations from the private sector.Cloud computing will also help our IT services take advantage of leading-edge technologies including devices such as tablet computers and smart phones.

The strategy document also highlight the necessary change in federal agency mindset. “To be successful, agencies must manage cloud services differently than traditional IT assets.As with provisioning, cloud computing will require a new way of thinking to reflect a service-based focus rather than an asset-based focus.”

Security concerns are also address in a head-on, balanced manner:
“The Federal Government will create a transparent security environment between cloud providers and cloud consumers. The environment will move us to a level where the Federal Government’s understanding and ability to assess its security posture will be superior to what is provided within agencies today. The first step in this process was the 2010 Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). FedRAMP defined requirements for cloud computing security controls, including vulnerability scanning, and incident monitoring, logging and reporting. Implementing these controls will improve confidence and encourage trust in the cloud computing environment.

To strengthen security from an operational perspective, DHS will prioritize a list of top security threats every 6 months or as needed, and work with a government-wide team of security experts to ensure that proper security controls and measures are implemented to mitigate these threats.

NIST will issue technical security guidance, such as that focused on continuous monitoring for cloud computing solutions, consistent with the six step Risk Management Framework (Special Publication 800-37, Revision 1).”
 
 

Bookmark and Share

Cloud Musings 
( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – KLJ )
Cloud computing will also allow agencies to improve services and respond to changing needs and regulations much more quickly.
Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network

1 Comments

  1. cloud computing on February 15, 2011 at 10:22 am

    Really very good post.Thanks for posting this.