Guest Blog: Sequestration and the Cloud

May 30, 2013 / G C Network /

Leading Federal Integrators Address Tactical Cloud Computing

By G C Network | October 7, 2009

Yesterday during the first annual Government IT Conference and Expo, tactical cloud computing was cited as a critical component within this new paradigm. Joining me to address the issue were:…

Carpathia Creates Government Solutions Business Unit

By G C Network | October 6, 2009

In a strong statement of focus, Carpathia Hosting has announced the formation of Carpathia Government Solutions, a unit dedicated to providing solutions specifically for federal civilian and defense agencies. This…

INPUT FedFocus 2010

By G C Network | September 30, 2009

Please join me at the 7th Annual FedFocus Conference, November 5, 2009, at the Ritz Carlton in McLean, VA. This conference has been designed to provide crucial information on upcoming…

Dataline, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Unisys on Tactical Cloud Computing

By G C Network | September 25, 2009

I’m proud to announce that representatives from Lockheed Martin, SAIC, and Unisys will join me in a Tactical Cloud Computing “Power Panel” at SYS-CON’s 1st Annual Government IT Conference &…

GSA, DoD and NCOIC to Collaborate on Government Cloud Computing

By G C Network | September 22, 2009

Yesterday, during the NCOIC Cloud Computing Workshop, collaboration seemed to be the focus as Katie Lewin, GSA Cloud Computing Initiative Program manager, and Dan Risacher, DoD Cloud Computing Storefront project…

FederalNewsRadio Highlights Government Cloud Computing

By G C Network | September 20, 2009

Last week’s Apps.gov announcement was the latest steps in the government’s “at the quick step” march into cloud computing. FederalNewsRadio, a Washington metro area media fixture, highlighted the event with…

NCOIC Officially Launches Cloud Computing Working Group

By G C Network | September 14, 2009

On Wednesday, 9 September 2009 the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) Technical Council formally approved the creation of a Cloud Computing Working Group (CCWG). Organizationally this new working group…

1 Billion Mobile Cloud Computing Subscribers !!

By G C Network | September 10, 2009

Yes. That’s what I said! A recent EDL Consulting article cites the rising popularity of smartphones and other advanced mobile devices as the driving force behind a skyrocketing mobile cloud…

NCOIC Holding Full-Day Cloud Computing Workshop

By G C Network | September 4, 2009

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium will be holding an all day Cloud Computing Workshop on September 21, 2009 in Fairfax, VA. Open to the public, this workshop will focus…

Pentagon Reviews Unisys Stealth

By G C Network | August 31, 2009

According to a Newtworkworld.com article, the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFC) is currently evaluating Unisys Stealth technology at the Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence (JTC-I) in Suffolk, Virginia. “Unisys…

(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