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NPR on Cloud Computing
You know it’s important when NPR covers it !! On the “All Things Consider” radio show, NPR took a look into cloud computing. I’m not sure if Computing In The…
Sun Federal Cloud Computing eBook
Sun Federal now has it’s ebook on cloud computing available for all. The website doesn’t really offer any new information, but it does highlight how Sun Federal is targeting the…
Amazon Elastic Block Store
Last week, with their announcement of Elastic Block Store, Amazon has made enterprise class storage in the cloud a reality. According to Dion Hinchcliffe of Ziff Davis,”Elastic Block Store finally…
HP CTO On the Future
In a recent Web Guild article, Shane Robinson, Chief Strategy & Technology Office for HP outilined his belief that we are in the early stages of a major shift. As…
Google serves as first line of defense during Russia’s invasion of Georgia (A plug for the cloud)
As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, “As Georgian troops retreated to defend their capital from Russian attack, the websites of their government, also under fire, retreated to Google. In…
Apptis and Servervault announce Fedcloud
On August 18th, Apptis announced a partnership with ServerVault to offer a trusted cloud computing environment to federal agencies. Called Fedcloud they are offering a federally compliant, on-demand infrastructure that…
SOA-R Educational Series Schedule Changes
Since launching the SOA-R series back in July, cloud computing has become a hot topic among national security professionals. Evidence of this high level of interest is obvious from the…
Comments from Mr. Robert Carey, DON CIO and Army COS General George W. Casey, Jr
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the distinct pleasure to listen to both Mr. Robert Carey, CIO, Department of the Navy, and General George W. Casey, Jr., Chief…
Akamai at SOA-R Session
Had another very enlightening SOA-R session last week. Of particular note to me was Akamai’s vision of cloud computing. As presented by Fran Trently, Sr. Director Public Sector, Akamai is…
Six Benefits of Cloud Computing
A Public CIO magazine article, to be published later this fall, will highlight six main benefits of cloud computing. Reduced Cost Increased Storage Highly Automated Flexibility More Mobility Allows IT…
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]
3 Comments
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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
Thank you very much for your comments. I agree with your thoughts and personally think that cloud portability will be a huge challenge.
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!