By annie shum | September 4, 2009
Today Cloud Computing is all the rage. But is it poised to become the “Next Big Thing” in the pursuit of the IT “Computing Nirvana”? Clearly the jury is still out. But make no mistake, the IT industry is once again abuzz with excitement. A wide swath of pundits, analysts and industry observers within and without the IT industry (including Business Week, Fortune, Economist, and Forbes) are hailing Cloud Computing as the latest agent of disruptive change. In the arguably overzealous May 2008 research note titled: “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake”, Merrill Lynch estimated that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity would amount to $160bn, including $95bn in business and productivity applications (email, office, CRM, etc.) and $65bn in online advertising. And not surprisingly, Gartner placed Cloud Computing at the peak of “Inflated Expectations during 2009” in the recently (August 11, 2009) unveiled Hype Cycle Special Report. Interestingly, comparing the corresponding Gartner 2008 and 2009 reports reveals an apparent rapid acceleration of the Cloud Computing buzz over the course of the past year.
Coincidentally , Cloud Computing could help transform the US government from proverbial IT laggard to leading edge practitioner and champion of industry standards for inter-Cloud security and interoperability. Clearly departing from traditional government practices, the newly appointed Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, a firm believer and strong supporter of Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 social computing, is actively taking on the quasi role of “Advocate-in-Chief” to promote and lead the US Federal government’s strategy in Cloud Computing, SaaS, Smart Grids and US “Connected Healthcare”. Here are a few notable quotes by Kundra:
“The cloud will do for government what the Internet did in the ’90s. We’re interested in consumer technology for the enterprise. It’s a fundamental change to the way our government operates by moving to the cloud. Rather than owning the infrastructure, we can save millions.”
“I believe it’s the future. It’s moving technology leaders away from just owning assets, deploying assets and maintaining assets to fundamentally changing the way services are delivered.”
“It’s definitely not hype…Any technology leader who thinks it’s hype is coming at it from the same place where technology leaders said the Internet is hype.”
Perhaps recognizing that actions can speak louder than words, Kundra decided to make cloud computing one of his first key initiatives for the federal government with a series of action plans announced in the summer of ‘09. To start, a cloud working group of federal CIOs, led by GSA (General Services Administration) CIO Casey Coleman, was formed in order to explore options for accelerating the push of cloud computing into government. On July 15, 2009, Kundra announced plans to launch a GSA created online storefront for government agencies to purchase auto-provisioned (on a real-time basis) Cloud Computing services (as fully functional service IaaS) that are stored and maintained by third-party providers. See Figure 2 below for illustration. By design, to stay true to Cloud Computing core tenets, payment is by credit card or requisition.
Meanwhile, the use of Cloud Computing will expand into the general government sector at large, as both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy announced separate Cloud Computing initiatives in August 2009. According to Cloud Computing Journal, the Navy will begin experimenting with IaaS via Amazon’s EC2. Also, InformationWeek has reported the Army’s announcement that it will launch a pilot program using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to manage its environmental impact by tracking emissions and regulatory compliance. Besides the federal branches, several state governments such as California’s CIO have also expressed their support for Cloud Computing. In particular, state of Michigan CIO Ken Theis is embarking on a large scale plan to build a new extremely energy–efficient, mega datacenter (80,000 to 100,0000 square foot), designed to provide cloud computing services to offer application hosting and managed services to any public entity in Michigan including state agencies, cities, counties and schools.
But this Michigan government Cloud has an interesting new twist on outsourcing and could turn out to be a portentous development; or at least an “out of the box” approach to leveraging the economics of Cloud Computing. Because not only does this plan envision building a public-sector Cloud, unexpectedly, the new government data center is also being positioned as a competitive alternative to offshore application hosting and storage for private companies. “We’ll give them what I call a second-tier solution. First tier is an on-site data center. Third-tier is offshore hosting. This is a second tier. It won’t be as cheap as offshore, but a lot more reasonable than having folks on site.”- Ken Theis, 2009. By offering low-cost Cloud services/hosting for startup companies and an ultra Green (sustainable) datacenter with standardized services, perhaps IT in general and Cloud Computing in particular, could help revitalize and indirectly transform Michigan in the aftermath of the recent US auto industry’s devastating downturn.
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