SIIA Blog
Opening Presentation by INPUT: “Five Indicators That Cloud Computing is Here to Stay”
Presenter:
Deniece Peterson, Manager, Industry Analysis, INPUT
Vendor Panel
Moderator:
Michael Binko, President & CEO, kloudtrack
Panelists:
Kevin Jackson, Cloud Evangelist and Engineering Fellow, NJVC
Nick Hoover, Senior Editor, InformationWeek
Robert O. Ames, Director and Deputy CTO, IBM Federal
Without question, the Federal Government has accurately identified cloud computing as a great opportunity for significant cost savings, flexibility, fast deployment and lower risk of project failure across all agencies. In December 2010, U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra unveiled the 25 Point Implementation Plan To Reform Federal Information Technology Management, which lays out an 18-month execution strategy to improve Government efficiency, effectiveness, and service delivery.
One of the key components of the plan is the launch of a “Cloud First” policy, where each agency CIO will be required to begin migration of multiple services to the cloud in the next 12-18 months. Central to the effort to provide a standard approach to Assessing and Authorizing (A&A) cloud computing services and products is FedRAMP (the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program), a program that proposes to provide joint authorizations and continuous monitoring for government and commercial cloud computing systems intended for multi-agency use.
While it’s a laudable goal to streamline and simplify cloud computing security risk assessment controls across agencies and to ease the certification process, the most recent draft FedRAMP still suffers from being an impractical high-bar approach to achieve the “approve once and use often” goal for cloud computing implementation across agencies. With the clock ticking on the aggressive “Cloud First” implementation timeline, SIIA submitted comments highlighting the various challenges posed by the current proposal. Fortunately, Vivek Kundra and key Federal IT leaders continue to demonstrate a dogged determination to make the cloud first policy a success, so hopefully there’s still time to fix FedRAMP and begin migrating to the cloud.
To that end, SIIA’s Cloud/gov conference couldn’t come at a better time this year, as agency CIOs assess the opportunities and challenges presented by this new policy. On February 17th, the conference will provide a timely opportunity to hear from Federal IT leaders from GSA, NIST and NASA, and talk with colleagues from other agencies about the opportunities and challenges presented by the new Cloud First policy.
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United States Government is the world’s largest consumer of information technology, spending over $76 billion annually on more than 10,000 different systems. In September 2009, the Federal Government launched the Cloud Computing Initiative and Apps.gov to streamline application adoption of cloud computing at Federal agencies. Since that time, Apps.gov has served as the Federal agency storefront for approved cloud computing applications, including business applications, cloud services, productivity apps and social media software.
While these steps have helped to speed-up Federal deployment of cloud computing, many small and medium-sized companies are still struggling to understand and capitalize on the opportunities presented by the Government’s embrace of cloud computing. In this webinar Matthew Goodrich, Project Manager for FedRAMP and Apps.gov, will outline the Cloud Computing strategy, how companies can get on the GSA schedule and participate via Apps.gov, as well as additional initiatives underway to further streamline the difficult procurement process that should make it easier for small and medium-sized companies to participate.
In this webinar you will hear from the GSA as they outline their Cloud Computing strategy, including Apps.gov, getting on the GSA schedule and more.
Speaker:
Matthew Goodrich
Project Manager, FedRAMP and Apps.gov
General Services Administration
Moderator:
Morris Panner
Chief Executive Officer
TownFlier, Inc.
To advance the slides, use the arrow buttons below.
Executive Summary by Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer
The Obama Administration is changing the way business is done in Washington and bringing a new sense of responsibility to how we manage taxpayer dollars. We are working to bring the spirit of American innovation and the power of technology to improve performance and lower the cost of government operations.
The United States Government is the world’s largest consumer of information technology, spending over $76 billion annually on more than 10,000 different systems. Fragmentation of systems, poor project execution, and the drag of legacy technology in the Federal Government have presented barriers to achieving the productivity and performance gains found when technology is deployed effectively in the private sectors.
In September 2009, we announced the Federal Government’s Cloud Computing Initiative. Cloud computing has the potential to greatly reduce waste, increase data center efficiency and utilization rates, and lower operating costs. This report presents an overview of cloud computing across the public sector. It provides the Federal Government’s definition of cloud computing, and includes details on deployment models, service models, and common characteristics of cloud computing.
As we move to the cloud, we must be vigilant in our efforts to ensure that the standards are in place for a cloud computing environment that provides for security of government information, protects the privacy of our citizens, and safeguards our national security interests. This report provides details regarding the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s efforts to facilitate and lead the development of standards for security, interoperability, and portability.
Furthermore, this report details Federal budget guidance issued to agencies to foster the adoption of cloud computing technologies, where relevant, and provides an overview of the Federal Government’s approach to data center consolidation.
This report concludes with 30 illustrative case studies at the Federal, state and local government levels. These case studies reflect the growing movement across the public sector to leverage cloud computing technologies.
Download the full report: [PDF] [DOCX (Word 2007 Format)]
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