Page 16 - GCN, March/April 2016

TRANSITION 2016: NEXT-GEN CLOUD TOOLS
GOVERNMENT BUILDS NEXT-GEN CLOUD TOOL CHEST
As government agencies continue to move to the cloud, the hybrid cloud is emerging as the most secure and flexible platform.
FOUR YEARS after building a foundation for moving
their workloads and applications to the cloud, government agencies have reason to expect a bright and productive 2016. New tools have emerged to help agencies adopt a new generation of sophisticated cloud platforms including the
hybrid cloud, as well as new clouds-based services.
The combination of a long gestation period for agencies
to get started with cloud services—provided by the federal government’s “Cloud First” policy—together with the advent of tools designed to help agencies acquire more advanced and secure cloud services have put agency cloud investments on a solid footing.
This outlook is reflected in studies that suggest the federal government’s annual investment in cloud will grow significantly over the next several years. According to researcher Deltek Inc., federal demand for commercial cloud services will jump from $2.4 billion in 2015 to $6.2 billion in 2020, an annual growth rate of 21.4 percent.
Although Cloud First provided agencies a framework under which to pilot new cloud-based applications, starting with the
Treasury Dept.’s cloud-oriented Recovery.gov, many believe the program has largely served its purpose as a launch pad for initiat- ing cloud services. Government agencies are now moving beyond point solutions toward infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and plat- form as a service (PaaS) options that will require agencies to take a more strategic, enterprise approach in migrating to the cloud.
“Cloud First helped open the door for us to embrace cloud,” says Greg Capella, acting executive director of the Enterprise Systems Development Office at the Department of Homeland Security. “But clearly the technology has evolved quickly.”
Indeed, agencies are now taking advantage of more advanced cloud capabilities, including access to improved system and service virtualization technologies, the ability to migrate data and services between shared clouds, and the growing adoption of infrastructure-based services.
Government agencies are also more closely eyeing the hybrid cloud as their platform of choice, as that conveys the benefits
of both the private and public cloud. As demand for these offerings grows, technology policymakers are seeking ways to accelerate acquisition paths for making hybrid cloud services available to agencies in the coming year.
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Recovery.gov becomes the first government- wide system to move to a cloud platform.
MAY 2010
GSA announces plans to make available cloud- based Infrastructure
as a Service (IaaS).
OCTOBER 2010
Federal CIO Vivek Kundra institutes the “Cloud First” policy.
NOVEMBER 2010
OMB publishes the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy.
FEBRUARY 2011
The Interior Department awards a contract to shift its e-mail to the cloud.
APRIL 2012
GSA launches the FedRAMP program to standardize product security assessments.
JUNE 2012
DISA’s cloud-based enterprise e-mail program hits 500,000-user milestone.
AUGUST 2012
2010 2011 2012
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