networking-info

Following through on a much anticipated action, GSA released their Cloud Computing Request For Quotation (RFQ) today. Cloud computing is a major part of President Obama's reform effort and this RFQ focuses on IaaS service offerings available within a public cloud deployment model. The implementation is a Low Impact System as defined in National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 199. According to that publication, the potential impact is low if the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability could be expected to have a limited adverse effect on organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals. A limited adverse effect means that, for example, the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability might: cause a degradation in mission capability to an extent and duration that the organization is able to perform its primary functions, but the effectiveness of the functions is noticeably redu...

Craig Newmark , best known for being the founder of the Craigslist website, is working hard to get the word out on Gov2.0. Last week in FedScoop , he really laid out how technology is improving our American democracy. "Overall, what we’re talking about is reinventing government from the bottom up, where web workers and ordinary citizens engage via the Net in large scale online grassroots democracy.... Our Founders created a flawed representative democracy, but with improvements it serves us well. However, we’re complementing that system via the Net with grassroots efforts which will create new checks and balances and accountability. " As stated in his article, Mr. Newmark hopes to help accelerate this progress by laying out national goals and enumerating specific actions for our elected and appointed leaders. I urge you to read his post and take his point of view to heart. "This is what the new democracy is about- building upon existing structures with serious engageme...

The large scale software companies often deal with the tension between incremental and revolutionary innovation. They know that if they only keep listening to their customers' requests the very same customers will put them out of the business. Clayton Christensen has captured this phenomenon in The Innovator's Dilemma . Over a period of time these companies have managed to execute the incremental innovation really well to deliver the same software release after release and occasionally introduce new products. However most of these companies struggle to incubate revolutionary innovation inside the company since it is fundamentally a different beast. The executives are often torn between funding the revolutionary initiatives to ride the next big wave and funding the incremental innovation that the current customers and the market expects. It is absolutely imperative for the executive management to differentiate between these two equally important but very different types of inno...

Maria Spinola , a Strategic IT Marketing and Innovation Adviser and editor at www.Cloudviews.org , has recently published An " Essential Guide to Possibilities and Risk of Cloud Computing ". Her very pragmatic approach has provided "a realistic perspective of the possibilities, benefits and risks of Cloud Computing; what to look for, what to avoid, and also some tips and best practices on implementation, architecture and vendor management strategies." So why should you bother if you've already decide not to use cloud computing? Maria actually has a very succinct answer to that question: Its' likely that without your knowledge, some of your departments are already using Cloud Computing, You will need to define a Cloud Governance Program and make it available to all your internal customers. A department may decide to go to a Cloud Computing service provider and start using their services immediately, instead of waiting months to have an on premise system insta...

Tim Quinn, Chief Infrastructure Officer, US Department of Interior, sees IP convergence as a key part of DoI's future IT infrastructure. During the Federal News Radio Executive Forum , he also cited the need to deliver voice, video and 2-way radio over internet protocols as important to the provisioning of collaborative services. According to Mr. Quinn, his job is to "reduce the burden of infrastructure" in order to allow more focus on information. He also believes the department should be a leader in green IT. The title of this week's Executive Forum, July 22nd at 2pm, is "Building Government's Future Infrastructure - Progress & Best Practices" . The program will discuss: Progress Report on the Networx Contract & Transition in the Federal Government Progress & Best Practices on Navy NMCI & DHS ONE-NET Critical Issues on Optimizing Government's Infrastructure Lessons Learned A Vision for The Future Participants include: Karl Krumbh...

During the Federal News Radio Executive Forum , Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Acting CIO, Margie Graves provides a unique insight on the department. In her remarks, she described the challenges that currently face DHS as "dramatically cultural". This candid statement, however,was accompanied by a seemingly contradictory emphasis on the importance of maintaining the independent component cultures. According to Graves, component cultures are essential to mission accomplishment and is what an employee "feels" when they come to work in the morning. The title of this week's Executive Forum, July 22nd at 2pm, is "Building Government's Future Infrastructure - Progress & Best Practices" . The program will discuss: Progress Report on the Networx Contract & Transition in the Federal Government Progress & Best Practices on Navy NMCI & DHS ONE-NET Critical Issues on Optimizing Government's Infrastructure Lessons Learned A Vision f...

Forrester recently published a report on the security of cloud computing that grossly exaggerates the security threats. To point out few specific instances: "Users who have compliance requirements need to understand whether, and how, utilizing the cloud services might impact your compliance goals. Data privacy and business continuity are two big items for compliance. A number of privacy laws and government regulations have specific stipulation on data handling and BC planning. For instance, EU and Japan privacy laws demand that private data—email is a form of private data recognized by the EU—must be stored and handled in a data center located in EU (or Japan) territories" This is a data center design 101. One of the biggest misconceptions the organizations have about the cloud computing is that they don't have control over where their information is being stored. During my discussion with the Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Online, at the launch of ...

The Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) is a multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle, specifically designed as the preferred source of information technology (IT) services for the majority of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enterprise infrastructure and initiatives. According to Soraya Correa, Director of the DHS Office of Procurement Operations (OPO), the success of EAGLE has led to plans for EAGLE II. Designed as a companion contract to EAGLE, FirstSource provides DHS with access to contractor's commercial catalogs which offer a full array of IT commodity products available in the commercial marketplace from multiple original equipment manufacturers, producers, and suppliers. It is built on the same strategy as EAGLE and lets DHS components place their own orders through a centralized ordering vehicle, accessible to senior leadership, where they can find data or information related to their IT needs. S...

I am humbled and more than pleased to serve as the Technical Chair of SYS-CON’s 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo . To highlight the importance of this conference, I only need to repeat the guiding principles driving President Obama’s technology agenda : · I Innovation in the Economy: Drive Economic Growth and Solve National Problems By Deploying a 21st Century Information Infrastructure o The President believes that modernized infrastructure is a necessary part of the foundation for long term economic stability and prosperity. That includes everything from a comprehensive national broadband plan, to new health care information technology, to a modernized electrical grid. · Innovation in Science: Invest in Science and Science Education o The President has named Dr. John Holdren, a nationally recognized expert on climate change and nuclear disarmament, as an Assistant to the President and the nation’s Science Advisor, and Dr. Steven Chu, ...

Have you ever been given the task of building and executing an aggressive customer outreach program? Well I received my assignment about a year ago and trust me; the budget was not commensurate with the assigned goal. My particular need was to educate prospective Federal government customers on a new information technology trend. Known as cloud computing, this new approach blends service oriented architecture (SOA), virtualization technologies and a "pay-by-the-use" sales approach into a new IT delivery business model. Although this new approach promised the delivery of better constituent service at a reduced cost, risk adverse Federal agency decision makers needed to know much more before they would even consider cloud computing as an option. During a time of economic collapse and fiscal crisis, competing security, governance and procurement requirements would also need to be adequately addressed. Unfortunately, "elastic computing" still needed an "elastic fed...

According to a PC World article , cloud computing and cybersecurity will be the high-growth areas for government IT spending over the next few years. The analysis and consulting firm Input projected that the federal government's cloud-computing market will grow by 27 percent over the next five years, with spending of more than $1 billion in 2014. Cybersecurity spending is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of more than 8 percent, from $8.2 billion this year to $12.2 billion in 2014. According to Deniece Peterson, manager of industry analysis at Input, the growth in cloud computing is a big area to watch. Instead of trailing the commercial sector, government use of cloud computing is expected to grow about the same rate as in the private sector. Last year, Input projected a compound annual growth rate of 4.1 percent in total government IT spending over five years, and this year the five-year growth rate is down to 3.3 percent a year. While Input has adjusted the num...

I'm happy to announce my appointment by SYS-CON to be the Technical Chair of the 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo . This event is a 1-day deep dive into how cloud computing is changing the way that Federal agencies leverage, procure and utilize IT. GovITExpo, which is being held October 6, 2009 in Washington, DC, builds on the success of SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo. Data storage, security and software services are among the major themes of the technical program. During one of the event sessions, I will also do a presentation on recent developments in Tactical Cloud Computing . This technology branch refers to the use of cloud computing technology and techniques for the support of localized and short-lived information access and processing requirements. Use cases could include: “Cloudbursting” to support cyclic data processing requirements; Establishing a cloud-based collaboration environment in order to coordinate firefighting resources during a wildfire; Virtu...

CIO no longer means Career Is Over. CIOs should not underestimate their skills and organizational clout to lead the company in its sustainability efforts by being a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO). Leverage relationship with the business: As a CIO you work closely with the business and have holistic understanding of the challenges that the business faces and the growth opportunities that they aspire to go after. You can leverage the relationship with the business to own and execute the sustainability strategy and effectively measure and monitor the progress using the expertise and investment into the IT systems. You can walk your business folks through your scenario-based architecture to help them quantify the business impact of the sustainability initiatives and estimate the required transformation efforts. Start with Green IT and lead the industry: Start with the area that you are most familiar with. Reduce the carbon footprint of your IT systems by improving the PUE of the data...

Today, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC™) announced an agreement to work together to advance the Enterprise Architecture of NextGen , FAA’s national airspace (NAS) transformation program. The NCOIC will analyze and evaluate NextGen’s enterprise architecture views, products, plans, net-centric patterns and operational concepts. Working collaboratively, its members will develop “voice of industry” recommendations about applying net-centric standards to the NextGen procurement, as a way to achieve interoperability in the NAS and, potentially, the skies beyond U.S. borders. According to Terry Morgan, NCOIC executive chairman, the standards recommendations, best practices and net-centric pattern development derived from this collaboration is expected to strengthen NextGen’s requirements. “Our recommendations will be founded on the thoughts of multi-national, multi-industry leaders in net-centricity.” The Nex...

July 13-15, 2009, in Arlington, VA, the Object Management Group , is holding a Standards in Government & NGO's Workshop . During the first day, the Cloud Computing Standards Summit will focus on cloud computing standards for government clouds. Participants include: Peter Mell and Tim Grance - National Institutes of Standards and Technology Reuven Cohen - Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum) Kevin Jackson - Dataline, LLC Mark Carlson - Storage Network Industry Association Winston Bumpus - Distributed Management Task Force Robert Grossman - Open Cloud Consortium Craig Lee - Open Grid Forum Nils Puhlmann - Cloud Security Alliance Douglas Johnson - Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Jim Warner - TM Forum James Odell - OMG SOA SIG Co-Chair, CSC, Ralph Thrash - CSC Recommendations from this summit will be made available to the July 15th, NDU IRM Cloud Computing Symposium attendees. The establishment of compatible industry and government ...

Hope you've already registered for th e “The Cloud Computing Symposium” , Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at the National Defense University in Washington, DC! This promises to be the premier government cloud computing event of the year. I first blogged on the event on May 20th and recently they had to cut off registration at 850 !! This event has clearly drawn tremendous interest from both government and industry. Speakers, in agenda order, are: Dr. Robert Childs, Senior Director, IRM College Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer Dave Girouard, President, Enterprise, Google David Wennergren, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Information Management, Integration, and Technology & Deputy Chief Information Officer David Cearley,Vice President & Gartner Fellow, Gartner Erich Clementi, Vice President, Strategy & General Manager, Enterprise Initiatives, IBM Russ Daniels, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, HP Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO, Object Ma...