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Vivek Kundra recently completed his analysis and released the US
Federal Government's overall cloud strategy for 2011 and beyond. The
ultimate goal is to increase ROI on all IT expenditures by wrestling the
most efficiencies from existing federal systems and data centers. The
following is an outline and overview of the implementation plan and the
expected results to be delivered as part of the implementation. This framework will then be used by each of the US Federal Agencies to determine their best course of action to proceed. The Ultimate goal is to achieve $20 Billion in IT cost savings annually by leveraging the cloud.
The Federal Government’s current Information Technology (IT)
environment is characterized by low asset utilization, a fragmented
demand for resources, duplicate systems, environments which are
difficult to manage, and long procurement lead times.
These inefficiencies negatively impact the Federal Government’s ability to serve the American public.
Cloud computing has the potential to play a major part in
addressing these inefficiencies and improving government service
delivery. The cloud computing model can significantly help agencies
grappling with the need to provide highly reliable, innovative services
quickly despite resource constraints.
Commercial service providers are expanding their available cloud
offerings to include the entire traditional IT stack of hardware and
software infrastructure, middleware platforms, application system
components, software services, and turnkey applications. The private
sector has taken advantage of these technologies to improve resource
utilization, increase service responsiveness, and accrue meaningful
benefits in efficiency, agility, and innovation. Similarly, for the
Federal Government, cloud computing holds tremendous potential to
deliver public value by increasing operational efficiency and responding
faster to constituent needs.
An estimated $20 billion of the Federal Government’s $80 billion in
IT spending is a potential target for migration to cloud computing
solutions.
To harness the benefits of cloud computing, they have instituted a
Cloud First policy. This policy is intended to accelerate the pace at
which the government will realize the value of cloud computing by
requiring agencies to evaluate safe, secure cloud computing options
before making any new investments.
By leveraging shared infrastructure and economies of scale, cloud
computing presents a compelling business model for Federal leadership.
Organizations will be able to measure and pay for only the IT resources
they consume, increase or decrease their usage to match requirements and
budget constraints, and leverage the shared underlying capacity of IT
resources via a network. Resources needed to support mission critical
capabilities can be provisioned more rapidly and with minimal overhead
and routine provider interaction.
Cloud computing can be implemented using a variety of deployment models – private, community, public, or a hybrid combination.
Cloud computing offers the government an opportunity to be more
efficient, agile, and innovative through more effective use of IT
investments, and by applying innovations developed in the private
sector. If an agency wants to launch a new innovative program, it can
quickly do so by leveraging cloud infrastructure without having to
acquire significant hardware, lowering both time and cost barriers to
deployment.
This Federal Cloud Computing Strategy is designed to:
1. Articulate the benefits, considerations, and trade-offs of cloud computing
2. Provide a decision framework and case examples to support agencies in migrating towards cloud computing
3. Highlight cloud computing implementation resources
4. Identify Federal Government activities and roles and responsibilities for catalyzing cloud adoption
Following the publication of this strategy, each agency will
re-evaluate its technology sourcing strategy to include consideration
and application of cloud computing solutions as part of the budget
process. Consistent with the Cloud First policy, agencies will modify
their IT portfolios to fully take advantage of the benefits of cloud
computing in order to maximize capacity utilization, improve IT
flexibility and responsiveness, and minimize cost.
Cloud benefits: Efficiency, Agility, Innovation
EFFICIENCY Cloud Benefits
Current Environment
• Improved asset utilization (server utilization > 60-70%)
• Aggregated demand and accelerated system con-solidation (e.g., Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative)
• Improved productivity in application develop-ment, application management, network, and end-user
• Low asset utilization (server utilization < 30% typical)
• Fragmented demand and duplicative systems
• Difficult-to-manage systems
AGILITY Cloud Benefits
Current Environment
• Purchase “as-a-service” from trusted cloud providers
• Near-instantaneous increases and reductions in capacity
• More responsive to urgent agency needs
• Years required to build data centers for new services
• Months required to increase capacity of existing services
INNOVATION Cloud Benefits
Current Environment
• Shift focus from asset ownership to service management
• Tap into private sector innovation
• Encourages entrepreneurial culture
• Better linked to emerging technologies (e.g., devices)
• Burdened by asset management
• De-coupled from private sector innovation engines
• Risk-adverse culture
Published by myITview.com
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