This week in the cloud

Two big stories this week in the cloud computing arena being covered by Federal News Radio.

Two firms protest GSA’s email cloud RFP

The General Services Administration’s $2.5 billion email-as-a-service contract is under protest. The two vendors filing the pre-solicitation protests said GSA’s requirement to have a government-only cloud is a “restrictive specification” and therefore not allowed under federal acquisition rules. Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller reports GSA is continuing to evaluate offers while it waits for a decision by the Government Accountability Office, which is expected by Oct. 17.

Army cloud email a ‘pathfinder’ to enterprise services

After being on hold for the past month, the Army on Tuesday resumed the migration of its 1.4 million email users around the world to the cloud. Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu reports, Army leaders are now aiming to have the entire migration completed by March of next year. The Army sees this as its starting point for greater use of the cloud. Once the email migration is complete, Mike Krieger, the Army’s deputy chief information officer, said his agency plans a new wave of enterprise services enabled by a more unified network, including collaboration tools in the cloud.

DoD, HUD, Interior ramp up cloud usage

Agencies across the federal government are increasing their use of the cloud. Over the past week, Federal News Radio has covered several agencies moving in that direction including Defense, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development.

The Defense Contract Management Agency told Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller moving to zero client computers is one of its top priorities. Jacob Haynes, DCMA’s chief information officer, said it’s the next step beyond thin client computers.

“A zero client device is the size of a small book and it sits on the desk and you plug all peripherals in to it, instead of having a hard drive or CD-ROM drive, all the things that forces mass in regular computers is done in the cloud,” he said. “That includes the storage, the computing power and anything else. The device is just there messaging.”

At the same time, the Interior Department announced its plans to transform its IT infrastructure. Interior says the four-year project will save $500 million from 2016-2020. Part of those money-saving efforts come in the form of cloud utilization, according to a separate report from Miller.

“We currently manage 13 stand-alone email systems at DOI, a result of the dispersed nature of the agency and a legacy of piecemeal development of IT at the bureau level,” agency CIO Bernard Mazer wrote in a CIO.gov blog. “We are in the process of consolidating these systems into a unified, cloud-based email service that will support 85,000 users across DOI. DOI.gov will also be moving to a cloud platform in order to better accommodate the five-million visitors per year who use the site. Of course, both of these initiatives will lead to cost savings, but the cloud also promises better service, such as guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime for both projects.”

After outsourcing much of its network infrastructure, HUD says it now wants to put it in the cloud.

“What is not there in a managed services contract is the business model of cloud. We do not have the elasticity. Prices do not go down when we use less,” Chief Technology Officer Mark Day said at a recent conference. “Managed services is what you might consider the high water mark price. If we ever bought that much of the infrastructure, we pay for that much of the infrastructure. In a cloud, you go up and down as your needs change. That is really what we are doing. It’s not a technical move for us. It’s a business model move in the procurement realm.”

GSA’s cloud services RFP released

The Fed Cloud Blog told you it was coming. Now, the General Services Administration has officially released its request for quotation for e-mail, office automation and electronic records management cloud services.

Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller reports the cloud contract has a ceiling of $2.5 billion over five years.

The important dates to remember? Vendors must submit bids by June 19 through the EBuy system. Questions about the RFQ should be submitted by May 20.

“Email-as-a-service is about amplifying the use of cloud computing,” said GSA Administrator Martha Johnson last week during TechAmerica’s CIO Survey conference. “Agencies will be billed for services based on the number of mail boxes used. Cloud providers maintain the infrastructure. The return on investment comes in less than two years.”

Cloud computing has become a major IT initiative in the Obama administration. Federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra says there are $20 billion in systems across the government that could move to the cloud.

DoD’s cloud e-mail plot thickens

Just how many Defense Department employees will eventually be using a cloud-based e-mail service depends who you ask.

Maj. Gen. Ronnie Hawkins, the Defense Information Systems Agency’s vice director, told reporters Tuesday, selling the Navy and Air Force on its cloud-based email system is a matter of when, not if. However, Hawkins admits, “If you talk to the services, it’s if. We’re in those negotiations with all of them right now. The ‘ifs’ are contingent on the pricing and the delivery of the capability.”

Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu reports all eyes are on the Army’s transition to the DISA cloud, and decisions by the other agencies will likely be made based on the success or failure of the Army’s move.

So far, the Army has transferred 20,000 of its 900,000 users to the cloud. Army chief information officer Mike Krieger says the Army is stepping up its transition timeline and, with the help of a new tool, will transition approximately 1,000 users a night into the new DISA system.

However, the Army’s migration to the DISA cloud was dealt a potential setback by Congress (also on Tuesday).

The House Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee cut funding for the Army’s email project in its markup of the 2012 budget by 98 percent until a business case analysis of the program can be completed.

The bill must still pass the full House and Senate to become law.

RELATED STORIES:

Enterprise email could pave way for single DoD sign-on

DoD to set new path for IT acquisition

GSA’s email cloud contract could be worth $2.5 billion

Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra expects the General Services Administration to issue a solicitation by May 10 for a $2.5 billion contract for email-as-a-service. It’s part of how the administration wants agencies to move to cloud computing, Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller reports.

Kundra said Wednesday there are $20 billion in systems across the government that could move to the cloud, and email and collaboration software are among the easiest first steps.

“We already are seeing 15 agencies that have identified 950,000 e-mail boxes across 100 email systems that are going to move to the cloud,” he said during an update on the administration’s 25-point IT reform plan at the White House. “This represents a huge opportunity for [vendors] to aggressively compete for these new opportunities in the cloud space and provide the government with the best value and most innovative technologies.”

Miller reports GSA has been working on the email-as-a-service RFQ since last summer. It likely will be a blanket purchase agreement, similar to the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) contract GSA awarded to 11 vendors last October.

Read Jason’s full story on this topic by clicking the link above.

Latest cloud news from Federal News Radio

Federal News Radio spoke with the FBI and the Army about their various uses of cloud this week. Listen to the interviews by clicking the links below.

Part 2: Fulgham says secure mobility will change the FBI

In a two-part interview with agency chief information officer Chad Fulgham, Federal News Radio talks about the various ways the FBI is currently using the cloud. Fulgham says he’s a big fan of federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s ideas for cloud and data center consolidation. He explains where the agency might go next in the cloud.

For Army, network tops modernization priorities

New Army CIO Lt. Gen. Susan Lawrence says her organization’s migration to the cloud is going well. So well, in fact, the Army intends to migrate more people into a cloud email system, including the Department of the Army headquarters. Lawrence said she’ll be looking for help and advice from industry to make these migrations as easy as possible.

NEH CIO looking for cloud opportunities

The National Endowment for the Humanities doesn’t use cloud computing outside of a test environment currently but Brett Bobley, the agency’s chief information officer, is looking to change that.

He tells Federal News Radio one of his main priorities is pinpointing areas where the agency can use cloud computing to increase efficiency and save money.

Bobley says he thinks using the cloud for web hosting is a “no brainer.” He also thinks it’s smart to move email to the cloud.

“One of the nice things about email…not only can it save you money, it’s an excellent continuity of operations tool.”

But like many other agencies that are wading into the cloud pool, Bobley says security is a concern for him.

“We want to be very smart about moving into the cloud. As you can imagine, there are a lot of cloud vendors out there but only a few of them are getting FISMA compliant and are really accustomed to working with the government and the particular needs of the government. On the one hand, we recognize the value of the cloud and we’re very into the planning and testing process on this so we can move in smartly but, again, we want to make sure we do it right so we get a system that is as reliable, if not more reliable, than the one we have now.”

Listen to Federal News Radio’s complete interview with Bobley here.

Cloud, cloud, everywhere there’s cloud

Wow. So much news about cloud, so little time. Good thing we have this blog, right?

Federal News Radio was busy covering news about cloud computing this week. We’ve gathered all of those stories here for easy access.

• Army weeks away from enterprise e-mail rollout
  The Army will begin migrating employees to its new cloud-based e-mail system starting February 15. Federal News Radio reporter Jared Serbu reports testing for the Army’s new e-mail is almost complete. The Army expects the change will mean a significant savings in software licensing.

• Behind the USDA cloud
  The cloud services offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have become quite popular among other federal agencies. Federal Tech Talk host John Gilroy talks with Jim Stevens, Acting Deputy Chief Information Officer for Business, Finance and Security about what the agency offers and how your agency can compare security of the various cloud options out there.

• Exclusive: OMB uses budget to set cyber guidelines
  The administration’s recently announced cloud-first policy was one of several governmentwide provisions specifically mentioned in the annual IT budget passback guidance. In his exclusive report, Federal News Radio reporter Jason Miller says the “guidance also instructs agencies to consider the technologies that have been approved under the FEDRamp process.”

• Microsoft announces new cloud computing option
  Microsoft has made its customer-relationship management application available online. The cloud version will be available worldwide beginning Feb. 28, 2011.

• What will the Google bid protest mean for cloud?
  Off the Shelf host Roger Waldron talks with David Dowd, partner at Mayer Brown, about the Google/Microsoft/Interior Department cloud decision recently handed down. The Interior Department had been ordered to stay an award to Microsoft after a judge ruled it violated the Competition in Contracting Act and rules in the Federal Acquisition Regulations. Waldron and Dowd discuss the potential implications for agency requirements development and acquisition planning.

More cloud offerings coming from GSA

Anyone attending the recent ACT-IAC Executive Leadership Conference in Williamsburg, Va., can tell you there was some great information on the future of cloud computing in government being announced and discussed at the event.

This includes the news that the General Services Administration has issued a notice on FedBizOpps.gov for e-mail-as-a-service under the software-as-a-service platform.

An industry day will be held Monday, Nov. 1 where interested vendors can get more information. GSA has also released its SaaS Email Pre-Solicitation Briefing Requirement document. GSA said it expects to issue a request for proposals by March 2011.

Katie Lewin, director of GSA’s Cloud Computing Program, told those in attendance at the event the agency is also considering a platform-as-a-service offering. Lewin said the agency is working with the U.S. Geological Survey among others to create a geospatial information platform in the cloud.

“It is the natural candidate for cloud computing because you have massive amounts of geospatial data stored all over government,” Dave McClure told Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller. McClure is GSA’s associate administrator for Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies and will also be speaking at Monday’s industry day. “If we can create a platform that would allow it to be stored securely and for common use, and leverage that across the entire government, I think we could see some unbelievable cost savings in the geospatial areas.”

Lewin said a RFP for geospatial could come out later in 2011.

Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra also had news about the draft FedRAMP specifications and requirements. The requirements document will be out soon and can be found on both FedBizOpps.gov and the CIO Council website when it’s released.

FedRAMP is a voluntary government-wide approach for agencies to submit cloud-based services to get certified and accredited (C&A) for cybersecurity once and trusted and used many times.

This, of course, all comes on the heels of GSA awarding 11 vendors a spot on the infrastructure-as-a-Service government-wide blanket purchase agreement.

How quickly will agencies adopt and start using the cloud services once they are available? Only time will tell.

Read more from Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller or listen to his report on this issue by clicking the audio link above.