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Today I received my credentials for the NIST Cloud Computing Collaboration Site. "The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been designated by Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra to accelerate the federal government’s secure adoption of cloud computing by leading efforts to develop standards and guidelines in close consultation and collaboration with standards bodies, the private sector, and other stakeholders. Computer science researchers at NIST are working on two complementary efforts to speed the government’s quick and secure adoption of cloud computing. NIST's long term goal is to provide thought leadership and guidance around the cloud computing paradigm to catalyze its use within industry and government. NIST aims to shorten the adoption cycle, which will enable near-term cost savings and increased ability to quickly create and deploy safe and secure enterprise applications. NIST aims to foster cloud computing systems and pract...

Happy New Year All!! 2011 will be the breakout year for GovCloud! Pressure to reduce budget, pressure to manage I resources better and the political pressure of the next presidential election will combine to accelerate adoption. The GSA IaaS groundwork has been laid and new policies are just about ready to be released !! Here are my predictions for GovCloud! The US Federal government will award over $2B in cloud computing related contracts. The USDA and GSA email deals are just the beginning. GSA final approval to the 11 government IaaS awardees will open the floodgate to rapid cloud experimentation. Lack of a final 2011 Federal budget will make cloud computing one of the few viable options for executing new IT programs next year. The European Union will establish a European community cloud computing strategy and governance framework similar to the US FedRAMP program . Even with its flaws, FedRamp will become a model for government cloud adoption globally. The European Community won...

This blog post was jointly authored by @Chirag_Mehta (Independent Blogger On Cloud Computing) and @rwang0 (Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research, Inc.) Part 1 was featured on Forbes: 2011 Cloud Computing Predictions For CIO’s And Business Technology Leaders As Cloud Leaders Widen The Gap, Legacy Vendors Attempt A Fast Follow Cloud computing leaders have innovated with rapid development cycles, true elasticity, pay as you go pricing models, try before buy marketing, and growing developer ecosystems. Once dismissed as a minor blip and nuisance to the legacy incumbents, those vendors who scoffed cloud leaders now must quickly catch up across each of the four layers of cloud computing (i.e. consumption, creation, orchestration, and infrastructure) or face peril in both revenues and mindshare (see Figure 1). 2010 saw an about face from most vendors dipping their toe into the inevitable. As vendors lay on the full marketing push behind cloud in 2011, customers can expect t...

I met James Lindenbaum, a founder of Heroku, in early 2009, at the Under The Radar conference in Mountain View. We had a long conversation on cloud as a great platform for Ruby, why Ruby on Rails is a better framework than PHP, and viability of PaaS as a business model. He also explained to me why he chose to work on Heroku at Y Combinator. I was sold on their future, on that day, and kept in touch with them since then. The last week, Salesforce.com acquired Heroku for $212 million . That's one successful exit, which is good news in many different dimensions. PaaS is a viable business model PaaS is not easy. It takes time, laser sharp focus, and hard work to build something that the developers would use and pay for. A few companies have tried and many have failed. But, it is refreshing to see the platform and the ecosystem that Heroku has built since its inception. Heroku did not raise a lot of money, kept the cost low, and attracted customers early on. I was told (by Byron, I thi...

Yesterday the US Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, unveiled an ambitious 25-point implementation plan for delivering more value to the American taxpayer. This plan focuses on execution and is designed to establish early wins Some highlights of the implementation plan include: Turnaround or terminate at least one-third of underperforming projects in IT portfolio within the next 18 months Shift to “Cloud First” policy. Each agency will identify three “must move” services within three months, and move one of those services to the cloud within 12 month and the remaining two within 18 months. Reduce number of Federal data centers by at least 800 by 2015 ( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article , get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )

As widely reported this week, the United States General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded a contract to Unisys to create a secure cloud-based email and collaboration platform. The solution will be based on Google Apps for Government and is expected to save $15M over the next five years when compared to current staff, infrastructure, and contract support costs. The award will provide up to 17,000 GSA employees and contractors worldwide with enhanced collaboration services, including email with expanded storage, as well as full access to Google Apps collaboration tools including Google Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. The government also extended the public comment period for the The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program or FedRAMP. This program has been established to provide a standard approach to Assessing and Authorizing (A&A) cloud computing services and products. FedRAMP allows joint authorizations and continuous security monitoring ser...