Texas Cloud Computing Lessons Learned

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…

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 small group of agencies to choose a virtual private cloud-based infrastructure as a service from a marketplace of service providers made available by a cloud broker. For this project, Texas DIR selected Gravitant and it’s cloudMatrix technology. Gravitant’s self-service web portal, Texas Cloud Self-Service Portal (TCSP), allowed participating agencies to manage and support all phases of the engagement from solutioning to provisioning, operations and capacity management, and decommissioning. Gravitant also provided extensive architecture and solution support. Gravitant, as the cloud broker, established, negotiated, and governed the reseller agreements with the individual cloud service providers. They maintained a catalog of services, line items, and prices associated with each provider, which enabled them to facilitate cloud provisioning across multiple providers—a key feature for government agencies.

This approach was selected as it maximized the opportunity to produce the broadest spectrum of experiences for customers. The cloudMatrix software helped to normalize the multiple services available, creating an “apples-to-apples” comparison in pricing and functionality as much as possible. In addition, this solution provided a single, unified web interface for end users to design, procure, provision, monitor, and govern the services. The PTCO allowed DIR and the pilot agencies to a gain a greater understanding of cloud infrastructure offerings for state government and document options and issues with provider selection, pricing, access security, data security, credentialing, provisioning time frames, service levels, service remedy options, terms of use, billing models, interoperability, mobility, scalability, capacity management, provider compliance, and monitoring and licensing.

As far as I know, the PTCO represents the only proven operational model of the cloud brokerage concept deployed within a government setting. Among the lessons learned, this project showed that the use of a cloud broker can:

  • Help government agencies screen their applications for cloud feasibility and prioritizing cloud migrations accordingly;
  • Address the challenges of cloud model comparisons due to the variables in product offerings, including the business models, service levels, and package inclusions;
  • Translate capacity requirements into provider line items, thus allowing for accurate estimation of cloud cost;
  • Provide a cloud service order review or approval workflow facility, a function not normally provided by cloud service providers; and
  • Provide a means to regulate payment across multiple government entities.

If you are interested in learning more about the results of this pilot project, download the complete report at https://www.slideshare.net/kvjacksn/pilot-texas-cloud-offering.

NJVC is partnering with Gravitant to bring this advance cloud brokerage technology to the federal marketplace.

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14 Comments

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