DoD, NASA and GSA Address Secure Cloud Computing

On Thursday, May 26th, the Federal Executive Forum featured three important Federal cloud computing leaders:

• David McClure- Associate Administrator, GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications
• Col. Kevin Foster- Office of the Secretary of Defense
• Chris Kemp- CTO, NASA Ames

The one hour program discussed:
-  Key Initiatives & Progress Made in Cloud Computing
-  NASA Ames Nebula and DISA RACE Case Studies 
- GSA Cloud Computing Storefront Update 
- Barriers or Contraints to still overcome in getting to a Secure Cloud Environment 
- A Future Vision for the next 1-2 Years in Cloud Computing

A program excerpt is provided below.

Federal Executive Forum Secure Cloud 5 26 10

(View more content from Kevin Jackson.)

Video of the entire program is available on the Federal Executive Forum website. These 1 hour radio and video programs are produced and broadcast monthly in Washington, DC and feature 3-4 Top Government IT Executives discussing mission critical issues. The programs always include some of the top federal government technology leaders.

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Cloud Computing Day at DoDIIS

I'm declaring Monday, May 24th, as Cloud Computing Day at DoDIIS.  Lieutenant General Richard Zahner, Army Deputy Chief of Staff, G2, seemed to get things going with his video that highlighted the future Army's dependence on "cloud nodes". I also enjoyed the keynote by EMC Corporation Board Chairman, President and CEO Joseph Tucci's "A New Vision of IT: The Private Cloud".  As I listed last week, many of the breakout sessions also focused on cloud. In fact, an additional Wednesday session titled "High Assurance Platform (HAP) - The Cloud In Your Pocket" was added.

The highlight of my day was of course the panel where I had the honor of sharing with Teresa Westfall of the NRO and Bob Lozano from Appistry. We had over 100 energized attendees. Thank you all for your interest.  As promised, the panel presentations are provided below.

Teresa Westfall - DoDIIS Worldwide 2010

View more presentations from Kevin Jackson.

Kevin Jackson - DoDIIS Worldwide 2010

View more presentations from Kevin Jackson.

Bob Lozano - DoDIIS Worldwide 2010

View more presentations from Kevin Jackson.

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Vivek Kundra - State of Public Sector Cloud Computing

Last week Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra release his report on the “State of Public Sector Cloud Computing”. The report not only details Federal budget guidance issued to agencies to foster the adoption of cloud computing, but it also describes 30 illustrative case studies at the Federal, state and local government level. As stated in the report:


“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.”

Issuance of this report reinforces last week’s Washington, DC event during which the CIO pushed to engage closely with industry on this important journey towards cloud computing. A critical aspect of this journey is the development of cloud computing standards. Led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) , these activities will facilitate industry adoption of high priority security, interoperability, and portability requirements. Current cloud computing standards development activities, conducted by the NIST Information Technology Laboratory (ITL), include:

Special Publications: NIST plans to issue an initial SP on cloud computing. The purpose is to provide insight into the benefits and considerations, and the secure and effective uses of cloud computing. More specifically, the document will provide guidance on key considerations of cloud computing: interoperability, portability, and security. To present these issues, the document will use the broadly recognized and adopted NIST Definition of Cloud Computing as a basis, given informal models of the major cloud computing service categories (Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service). The publication will outline typical terms of use for cloud systems, will synopsize future research areas in cloud computing, and will provide informal recommendations.

Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart Adoption of Cloud Computing (SAJACC): The SAJAAC strategy and approach is to accelerate the development of standards and to increase the level of confidence in cloud computing adoption during the interim period before cloud computing standards are formalized. SAJACC will provide information about interim specifications and the extent that they support key cloud computing requirements through a NIST hosted SAJACC portal. More specifically, SAJACC will provide a public Internet-accessible repository of cloud computing usage scenarios (i.e., use cases), documented cloud system interfaces, pointers to cloud system reference implementations, and test results showing the extent to which different interfaces can support individual use cases.

Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP): NIST, in the technical advisory role to the interagency Federal Cloud Computing Advisory Council (CCAC) Security Working Group will define an initial technical approach and process for FedRAMP consistent with NIST security guidance in the context of the Federal Information System Management Act (FISMA). To clarify the role of NIST with respect to FedRAMP, while NIST is supporting the definition of the FedRAMP process from a technical perspective, NIST is not the implementing organization. The governance and operational implementation of FedRAMP will be completed under the auspices of the Federal CIO Council.

I personally urge you to take a look at the case studies provided. Federal agency examples are impressive!

• Department of Defense (United States Army) - Army Experience Center
• Department of Defense (Defense Information Systems Agency) - Rapid Access Computing Environment
• Department of Defense (Defense Information Systems Agency) - Forge.mil
• Department of Defense (United States Air Force) - Personnel Services Delivery Transformation
• Department of Energy (Lawrence Berkeley National Labs) - Cloud Computing Migration
• Department of Health and Human Services - Supporting Electronic Health Records
• Department of the Interior - Agency-wide E-mail
• General Services Administration (Office of Citizen Services) - USA.gov
• General Services Administration - Agency-wide E-mail
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Ames Research Center) - World-Wide Telescope
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) - Be A Martian
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Enterprise Data Center Strategy
• Social Security Administration - Online Answers Knowledgebase
• Federal Labor Relations Authority - Case Management System
• Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board - Recovery.gov Cloud Computing Migration
• Securities and Exchange Commission - Investor Advocacy System

Although these only represent the tip of the iceberg, they are also proof positive that the public sector’s move towards cloud computing is real and enduring

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Cloud Computing at DoDIIS

Next week in Phoenix, AZ, the Defense Intelligence Agency will host the 2010 Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS) Worldwide Conference. The theme of this event is "Mission Powered Partnerships...Keeping our Customers One Step Ahead." The conference will feature 400 solution providers, over 2000 attendees, high level plenary speakers, numerous breakout sessions and nightly networking socials.

On Monday, May 24th, cloud computing is a prominent topic with the following sessions scheduled:

A New Vision of IT: The Private Cloud
Mr. Joseph M. Tucci
Chairman, Board of Directors, President and Chief Executive Officer, EMC Corporation

We are at the beginning of what largest and most significant wave of beneficial change in the IT industry's long evolution. This new wave, known as cloud computing, has captured the attention of pragmatic organizations everywhere that are frustrated with the increasing complexity, inflexibility, and cost of their IT environments. The private cloud holds the promise of providing you with a dramatically more efficient and effective model for delivering IT as a service. Mr. Tucci will offer an industry perspective on what the private cloud is and how organizations can make the journey from the world of physical IT to fully virtualized IT and ultimately to cloud-based IT infrastructures.

Cloud Computing: Government Challenges and Industry Perspectives
Bob Lozano, Appistry; Kevin Jackson, NJVC; Teresa Westfall, NRO

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. In this session, The NRO CIO will outline the value and challenges of cloud computing to the intelligence community. Industry representatives will then present a mission-driven process for developing practical cloud computing solutions. This process represents lessons learned from actual cloud computing projects.

Data Center to Cloud: Architecting the Network for the Cloud Data Center
John Bartlomiejczyk, Juniper Networks, Inc.

As talk of cloud computing swirls through the IT atmosphere, IT executives are sorting fact from fiction while trying to figure out what the new cloud computing model means for their organization. This presentation will focus on the processes of simplify, share, and secure to achieve the highly scalable, uncompromising performance, security, and manageability of the Cloud Data Center.

Information Integration (I2) Pilot
Douglas McGovern, ODNI

The I2 Pilot is employing scalable cloud computing and shared technical services to demonstrate the viability of a distributed/federated Enterprise Infrastructure supporting both Mission and Business Operations of the Intelligence Community.



See you at DoDIIS !!




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