Guest Blog: Sequestration and the Cloud

May 30, 2013 / G C Network /

One AWESOME Week of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | June 11, 2010

We just finished up five AWESOME days of cloud computing training with USAREUR in Schwetzingen, Germany ! CHECK IT OUT !! Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com. Sure we…

NGA Exploring “Community Cloud” With NCOIC

By G C Network | June 7, 2010

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is looking to leverage industry expertise through collaboration with the Network Centic Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC). NGA provides timely, relevant and accurate geospatial intelligence in…

DoD, NASA and GSA Address Secure Cloud Computing

By G C Network | May 29, 2010

On Thursday, May 26th, the Federal Executive Forum featured three important Federal cloud computing leaders: David McClure- Associate Administrator, GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications Col. Kevin Foster- Office of…

Cloud Computing Day at DoDIIS

By G C Network | May 25, 2010

I’m declaring Monday, May 24th, as Cloud Computing Day at DoDIIS.  Lieutenant General Richard Zahner, Army Deputy Chief of Staff, G2, seemed to get things going with his video that…

Vivek Kundra – State of Public Sector Cloud Computing

By G C Network | May 25, 2010

Last week Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra release his report on the “State of Public Sector Cloud Computing”. The report not only details Federal budget guidance issued to agencies…

Cloud Computing at DoDIIS

By G C Network | May 18, 2010

Next week in Phoenix, AZ, the Defense Intelligence Agency will host the 2010 Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS) Worldwide Conference. The theme of this event is “Mission Powered…

Open Group Publishes Guidelines on Cloud Computing ROI

By G C Network | April 29, 2010

In an important industry contribution, The Open Group has published a white paper on how to build and measure cloud computing return on investment (ROI). Produced by the Cloud Business…

The Army’s iPhone Story

By G C Network | April 15, 2010

Sandra Erwin of National Defense magazine just published an excellent article on the Army’s foray into developing soldier-friendly smartphone applications.  Giving credit to Army CIO Lt. Gen, Jeffrey Sorenson and…

Vivek Kundra Steps Up to Cloud Computing’s Next Challenge

By G C Network | April 11, 2010

” [C]loud customers must be able to easily store, access, and process data across multiple clouds; weave together a mesh of different services to meet their needs; and have a…

Cloud Computing’s Next Challenge

By G C Network | March 26, 2010

Earlier this month, Melvin Greer and I teamed up on a Military Information Technology piece. Melvin is a senior research engineer and cloud computing chief architect at Lockheed Martin, and…

(This post was provided by Praveen Asthana, Chief Marketing Office of Gravitant, a cloud service brokerage and management company)

Sequestration burst out of obscurity and entered our household vocabulary in 2013.  It got our attention because the impact of it is $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts from the Federal budget over the next ten years.  About $85B of these cuts will occur by September of 2013 – and these cuts are being disproportionately applied:  Once you exempt the sacred programs, what’s less sacred (like Federal I.T. spending) is going to get hit hard.  Forrester Research analyst Andrew Bartels expects that the Federal budget cuts will shave at least $12B out of 2013 U.S. tech spending (https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237240/The_sequester_will_hurt_tech_nationally).
So what’s to be done? Computerworld points out that “Dale Luddeke, chair of the Industry Advisory Council (IAC), an IT industry group expects to see a shift in government to things with cost savings attributes, such as open source, and agile development and cloud technology.”
Federal agency CIOs are already there:  At this year’s Cloud Computing for DoD and Government Summit held in Washington D.C. on Feb 26, Richard Spires, then CIO of the Dept of Homeland Security, said in a keynote that he was looking to take out $500M of IT spend from his $5B IT budget and was looking to cloud computing as a primary vehicle to accomplish this.
There you have it:  Cloud to the rescue.
This is not surprising, given that public cloud computing has been shown to reduce IT infrastructure spending by 37% (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.3492.pdf) or more.  And Cloud spending has the additional benefit of converting the capex model (“pay up-front”) to an opex model (“pay-as-you-go”) which gives much more flexibility.
This is not new news.  Cloud computing’s promise has been well known to the government which has had a ‘Cloud First’ mandate for two years now.  But implementation progress towards this goal has been tepid according to the GAO (https://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592249.pdf), due in part to lack of skills, guidance, tools, security and the need for new processes (such as cloud procurement).
However, there is one stand out government entity that has overcome these barriers and seen great success using cloud computing to reduce costs and improve agility:  this is the Dept of Information Resources of the State of Texas.
Nearly two years ago, the State of Texas implemented the Texas Cloud Self-Service Portal (https://www.dir.texas.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Texas.gov/ptco.pdf).
State Agencies who used the portal were able to reduce IT infrastructure costs by up to 30% and, more importantly, were able to significantly reduce deployment times for new IT resources from months to days.  This portal was so successful that it is now being extended to all 200 agencies in the State.
The key technology behind the Texas Cloud Self-service Portal was a Cloud Brokerage and Management platform that allowed for the easy onboarding and management of cloud computing resources.  The platform streamlined the assessment, design, procurement, provisioning, and real-time governance of solutions across hybrid cloud environments.
Sequestration is driving a new sense of urgency towards using cloud computing to save costs.  Fortunately, Government agencies now have a roadmap and a tool set to enable them to easier onboard to and use cloud computing using the State of Texas example.  Seeing this, Agency CIOs have now recognized the power of a Cloud Brokerage platform and it is no wonder that every agency CIO that presented at the DoD and Government Cloud Computing summit this year stood up and said they would be implementing a Cloud Brokerage platform.
This leads us to believe that 2013 will be the year Cloud First gets real.

Praveen Asthana is Chief Marketing Officer of Gravitant, a cloud services brokerage and management company. Prior to joining Gravitant, Praveen was Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for Dell’s $13B Enterprise Solutions Division.


Bookmark and Share

Cloud Musings on Forbes
( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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

G C Network

5 Comments

  1. james atel on June 1, 2013 at 4:29 pm

    it,s such a nice and awesum blog about cloud computing info for more plz visit us
    it company in Ireland



  2. Westport Fishing Charter on June 6, 2013 at 3:24 pm

    The game is since you aren't in executive power, hurt the economy all you can so that you can use it as a campaign slogan next time (see? his polices failed, even though we disingenuously did everything we could to make the economy fail).



  3. Carla Dillon on June 12, 2013 at 1:11 pm

    These blogs are valuable because these are providing such informative information for all the people. guest blogged



  4. Russel adword on July 16, 2013 at 11:34 am

    Cloud Computing has various flavors, each purposely aimed at aligning with the varying business modules prevalent today. Managed Cloud Hosting is ideal for businesses that give precedence to factors like impregnable security and high availability instead of costs being incurred.

    Cloud Computing



  5. pramodinidr on October 16, 2013 at 6:23 am

    The post is having edible information , Cloud computing is quite easy to setup and maintain the service as it binds a range of technologies that allow the email security and protection from the virus , spam and other threatens .



Cloud Computing

Cybersecurity