Please Help Me Plan My Meeting With Mr. Vivek Kundra !!

Animoto = Automated Imagery PED

By G C Network | December 3, 2008

Over the past two days, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Stevie Clifton, Co-founder & CTO of Animoto. Besides being one of the coolest things I’ve seen in…

World Summit of Cloud Computing 2008

By G C Network | December 1, 2008

Video by Animoto using cloud computing technology. (Done in 20 minutes for free)!! Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

2008 World Summit of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 30, 2008

After a uneventful trip , I’m now in Israel for the World Summit. With over 500 people expected to attend, it promises to be an exciting time. Unfortunately, I arrived…

CloudCamp Federal ’08

By G C Network | November 28, 2008

| Get your Presentation Pack Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

NCOIC Cloud Working Group

By G C Network | November 26, 2008

The NCOIC will be holding a cloud computing working group on December 10th during plenary session in Costa Mesa, CA. The session focus will be “Requirements for Enterprise Cloud Computing”.…

IBM Rating Clouds

By G C Network | November 25, 2008

According to Cloud Computing Journal, and Red Herring, IBM will now rate other cloud providers. Using the “Resilient Cloud Validation” program, IBM will validate their facilities, applications, data, staff, processes…

Cloud Computing vs. Cloud Services

By G C Network | November 24, 2008

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…

Inaugural “Inside the Cloud” Survey

By G C Network | November 21, 2008

Appistry and CloudCamp recently released results from the first “Inside the Cloud” survey. Key takeaways were: Amazon perceived as cloud leader, with twice as many votes as Google Infrastructure providers…

FIAC Presentation Mentions Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 20, 2008

At the recent Federal Information Assurance Conference, Bob Gourley, CTO Crucial Point LLC, and former Defense Intelligence Agency CTO, recently provided his views on the state of Federal IT. His cloud…

Sun Cloud Czar

By G C Network | November 19, 2008

Earlier this week it was announced that, Sun, Senior Vice President, Dave Douglas, was appointed to lead the Company’s cloud computing efforts. A JDJ Article also stated that, in addition to becoming Sun’s…

A couple of weeks ago, I was offered a chance to meet Mr. Vivek Kundra at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in downtown Washington, DC. Needless to say, I was honored to be given the opportunity. Although I was clear on my own views of how the Federal government could use cloud computing, the Obama administration’s plans were, at that time, anything but certain. What a difference a week makes !!

As has been widely reported, the President’s 2010 Budget submission has firmly set cloud computing as a “key tool for improving innovation, efficiency and effectiveness in Federal IT. The GSA has emphasized this edict by releasing a request for information (RFI) for Infrastructure as a Service offerings. This rapid and fairly decisive course change to the way Federal IT will be procured in the future can potentially change an entire industry. Looking at what has happened in the financial and automotive industries, this could also be seen as the administration flexing its muscle yet again in order to set the direction of a crucial component of the US economic system.

So now, with a little over a week before my meeting with Mr. Kundra, what do I talk about? Since the administrations direction has now been set, there’s clearly no need to discuss cloud computing as the right direction for Federal IT. Not being a political pundit or economic advisor, I will definitely stay away from the debates around government influence over the commercial sector. So as a technologist, I will stick to my knitting and discuss what technologies the coming GovCloud implementation will be able to leverage going forward.

If you have any suggestions for me, I would be happy to hear about them. The only thing I ask is for your recommendations to be focused on general technologies, industry standards or open source approaches. Please, no specific commercial products or specific technology implementations.

Of particular interest to me will be those technologies, standards or approaches that are “shovel ready”, and available for pilot implementations today! As outlined in the budget, “… pilot projects will be implemented to offer an opportunity to utilize more fully and broadly departmental and agency architectures to identify enterprise-wide common services and solutions, with a new emphasis on cloud-computing. The pilots will test a variety of services and delivery modes, provisioning approaches, options, and opportunities that cloud computing brings to Federal Government. Additionally, the multiple approaches will focus on measuring service, cost, and performance; refining and scaling pilots to full capabilities; and providing financial support to accelerate migration”.

I look forward to your assistance on this!

Kevin Jackson
[email protected]

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

G C Network

3 Comments

  1. Anonymous on May 18, 2009 at 8:57 pm

    Kevin – good luck with the meeting. I like your idea of crowd-sourcing suggestions for the meeting! Others will likely have more valuable ideas than mine, so let me just suggest a little thing I’d like Vivek to keep in mind as a guiding principle for open government: Choice.

    What do I mean? Government agencies, as they modernize to approach the agility and performance of great commercial IT shops, will be looking to cloud-solution (and other) providers for “business value and choice in a mixed-source world,” in the words of Microsoft’s Teresa Carlson. The agency CIOs and CTOs whom Vivek leads need the flexibility to choose the best tools to accomplish their mission regardless of platform. I’d hate to see a “one-size-fits-all” prescribed solution (even if it were based on Microsoft products!), and I think we’ll all benefit from a balanced approach with appropriate choice and flexibility reserved for smart CIOs.

    Good luck and I’m looking forward to reading your report of the meeting! -lewis



  2. Kevin Jackson on May 18, 2009 at 10:16 pm

    Thank you very much for your comments. I agree with your thoughts and personally think that cloud portability will be a huge challenge.



  3. Jason Matthew McNutt on May 19, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    Kevin, that is an awesome opportunity to be able to be part of shaping the future of IT for our Govt. This obviously comes with some great responsibility as well.

    I think in order for the govt to adopt such a broad technology there needs to be standards set for interoperability and security first. We all know that standards boards tend to lag behind real world implementations. But in this case the consequences of not going forward with agreed upon security and interop standards is very dangerous.

    What has worked with other technologies is lighting a torch underneath the vendors to get together and provide a set of standards before any govt contracts are let. Sometimes providing that carrot (big carrot) is essential to get everyone in the same room. Good luck with your meeting, very cool!