Federal Cloud Computing Roadmap

ServerVault, a long time provider of IT hosting services to the Federal government, has been discussing cloud computing quite a bit with their current (and future) customers.  The repetitive nature of the many varied conversations led John Curan, ServerVault EVP, COO and CTO, to put together a standard briefing on the subject. His "Federal Cloud Computing Roadmap" puts forth a possible answer to:

"What set of actions by the cloud computing industry (and related parties) would allow Federal agencies to gain the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining compliance with Federal IT policy?"

By referencing FISMA, OMB guidance and FIPS Publication 199, he clearly lays out the Federal CIO's dilemma when it comes to cloud computing.  It a good read and is probably very similar to the process that NIST is currently going through as they draft their Cloud Computing Security Publication. NIST's Perspectives on Cloud Computing and Standards should make your reading list as well.

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CSC and Terremark target US Government with Cloud Computing

Today's announcement by CSC reinforced the strong wave of cloud computing towards the Federal space. Ranked by Washington Technology Magazine as 9th largest (by contract dollar value) government contractor, this practically guarantees a bloody battle over the Federal cloud market.

"Together, CSC and Terremark will offer cloud services that include computing, storage and disaster recovery/continuity of operations that are delivered from a highly secure and reliable environment, located at Terremark's datacenter in Culpeper, Va.

'Terremark and CSC look forward to delivering a portfolio of cloud computing resources that will allow our government customers to implement IT services for mission-critical applications in minutes, not days," said Jamie Dos Santos, president and chief executive officer of Terremark Federal Group. "Instead of buying costly, cumbersome hardware, this offering provides the customer access to a resource pool of processing, storage and networking that can be provisioned on demand, all from Terremark's state-of-the-art facility in Culpeper, ensuring the security and reliability of the customer applications and data.'"

While this offering seems similar to the earlier Apptis/Servervault Fedcloud initiative, I expect that this move will force all the other large FSIs to quickly launch "cloud computing products" of their own.

While many will see these types of offering as thinly veiled datacenter outsourcing products, I do appreciate these cautious first steps for what they are and really look forward to the appearance of more aggressive cloud computing offerings in the near future.

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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 lets agencies "acquire, utilize, and disengage without contractual dependency (subscription fees, licenses, or long-term commitments)."

Apptis is currently scheduled to present at the October 8th SOA-R event at the Tower Club in Tyson's Corner. Sign-up on the SOA-R registration page if you would like to learn more about this offering.

This certainly marks an important milestone. If these two companies are jumping into the Federal market with cloud solutions, can others be far behind?

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