www.on-demandenterprise.com/features/Is_DC_Ready_for_Cl -
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Last Visited: 11/28/2008
Apptis CTO Phil Horvitz seizes on the cloud's ability to handle "surges" in need, also referred to as cloudbursting.
"That's where you see the tremendous benefits of cloud computing," he says, citing the Department of Homeland Security as a possible user in the case of a disaster.
"We're proposing a hybrid approach, where they keep their existing infrastructure and, upon surge or upon load, they go and leverage a cloud," he explains.
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Aside from the extras Apptis will provide, Horvitz sees this government cloud initiative as fertile ground for other consultants, too.
Most cloud providers don't offer managed services, he notes, so companies will be able to jump in the middle and provide higher availability, cloud-enablement of existing applications and other services that might be outside the knowledge base of agency employees.
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CIOs see that things are out of control, with datacenters that are "exploding" and operational expenditures growing rapidly, and Horvitz says cloud is a great solution for addressing these concerns.
Why not, he asks, buy computing for $200 per hour and have someone manage it for you rather than paying $30 million building a new infrastructure?
So far, he says, feedback has been "tremendous," especially from CIOs (who really like now-legendary price-performance stories like what the New York Times did with Amazon EC2).
Acknowledging that guys who manage the datacenters can find a million reasons to shoot this concept down, Horvitz says CIOs are listening because of their aforementioned budget pressures.
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Horvitz says that the government eventually will develop standards for the delivery model, and while Apptis is taking the initiative to help define what those standards will look like, some CIOs see an opportunity to step up, show they are innovative and do the right thing early on in the process.
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Horvitz cites FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) as a regulation that still tells agencies what they can and cannot do, but was written before cloud computing was even an option.
He says organizations like the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) are looking into what federal cloud standards might look like and "[p]robably within a year or two, you'll see the recommendations coming out of ITAA for what you have to have to be compliant for a commercial cloud for the government."
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And even though Apptis is willing to put in a lot of work to make a cloud secure should an agency decide to use it, Horvitz says there are certain requirements cloud providers will have to meet.
One of those requirements (which likely will not fly in the DoD, at least), probably will be cordoning off a piece of the cloud specifically for government use.
This allows certain security features to be wrapped around that section of infrastructure, Horvitz says, and will allow the appropriate parties to monitor where, exactly, the government's data is being stored and processed.
Additional requirements obviously will be put in place, which might include controlling access to the computer rooms housing the government machines.
Cloud Providers Are On Board
Apptis has talked to Amazon and Google, among other cloud providers, and Horvitz says they, too, have responded well.
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Horvitz says Google wants capture this revenue legitimately, but the previously discussed security and privacy concerns act as hindrances.
Apptis playing the part of middleman helps ease providers' minds, too.
"When I explain to them that they don't have to do much to capture a lot incremental revenue from the federal government," says Horvitz, "they're very interested."
Internally: Federated Infrastructure = Federated IT
Although Horvitz acknowledges the federal government has been slow in cloud uptake, it appears likely that cloud computing eventually will penetrate the federal government.
The remaining question is what that strategy will look like: will each agency use public clouds however and whenever they see fit, or will each build its own cloud a la DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency)?
Horvitz says DISA's RACE (Rapid Access Computing Environment) initiative is a big step in the right direction, and other agencies are taking notice and are starting to think about clouds when they buy new stuff.
They will really reap the rewards when they can leverage public clouds, too, he added. (Apptis holds one of four processing contracts for RACE.)
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