Do Federal Agencies Belong in Cloud Computing Networks?

Cloud computing has become so pervasive in the enterprise that even federal agencies are moving—slowly, of course—in the direction of on-demand computing. Given the current state of the economy and the yawning federal deficit, the efficiency and cost-savings associated with cloud computing may prompt an even quicker shift to the cloud.

"In many cases, agencies are already using the Internet," said Drew Cohen, a vice president in Booz Allen Hamilton's Defense IT practice who is working closely with federal agencies. "The words and terms are new, but the core tools have been evolving for some time. It's really just a maturing of things that are already going on."

DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), for instance, awarded contracts in 2006 for on-demand computing services. The idea was for government customers to pay for computing and storage capacity on an as-needed basis instead of having to invest in new hardware and software. Interested customers had to work through the Defense Enterprise Computing Center to develop solutions.

Click here to read about the trend toward private cloud computing.

Taking another step toward the cloud, DISA recently introduced RACE (Rapid Access Computing Environment), in which Department of Defense users go to a Web-based portal and provision their own operating environments based on standard Department of Defense architecture. RACE contractors include Hewlett-Packard, Apptis, Sun Microsystems and Vion.

"DISA likes that model in terms of supporting their customers," Cohen said, though noting that DISA is developing its own cloud for a number of security and privacy reasons. "Building your own cloud is whole different thing. When you build your own cloud, when does it become a cloud?"

Research in the cloud

Other, more public-facing agencies are embracing the now traditional cloud platforms offered by Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft. In February, Google announced it was working with NSF (National Science Foundation) and IBM to allow the academic research community to conduct experiments and test new theories and ideas using a large-scale, massively distributed computing cluster.

Jeannette Wing, the NSF assistant director for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, said in an open letter to the academic computing research community that the relationship would give government-funded researchers access to resources that would be unavailable to them otherwise.

According to Wing, NSF hopes the relationship will provide a blueprint for future collaborations between the academic community and private enterprise. "We welcome any comparable offers from industry that offer the same potential for transformative research outcomes," she said.