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.

Microsoft to host cloud services for USDA

The U.S. Department of Agriculture now has a blooming relationship with Microsoft.

Earlier this month, Microsoft and the USDA reached an agreement to have Microsoft host email for as many as 120,000 employees.

The company will also manage the USDA’s software and networks, as part of the agreement.

USDA employees currently use 21 different email systems at the agency’s 5,000 offices around the world. The agency hopes to start moving employees to Microsoft’s hosted service within the next month.

Employees will also have access to other Microsoft applications, such as SharePoint, Office Communications – an instant messaging service, and Live Meeting – a web-conferencing application.

“This migration is the culmination of USDA’s effort to streamline agency messaging, reduce costs and improve efficiencies that build on existing infrastructure and allow USDA to extend its on-premises software investments to the cloud solution,” Microsoft and the USDA said in a joint statement.

The agreement is a big deal for Microsoft, who recently lost a contract with the General Services Administration to host email.

Also this month, Microsoft announced it had achieved certification under the Federal Information Security Management Act.

The USDA isn’t alone in its decision to use Microsoft. Minnesota, California and New York City have all chosen Microsoft for cloud-based email.

Microsoft gets FISMA certification

Google will soon be fighting for room on the cloud with rival Microsoft.

Microsoft recently received Federal Information Security Management Act certification for cloud computing data centers — about five months after Google gained approval.

“Meeting the requirements of FISMA is an important security requirement for U.S. Federal agencies,” Microsoft’s Senior Director of Risk and Compliance Mark Estberg wrote in a Dec. 2 Global Foundation Services blog post.

However, Microsoft’s hosted Exchange and Online services are still in the process of getting approved for FISMA certification.

Microsoft recently reworked its cloud services and renamed it “Office 365.” Office 365 is currently in beta form and includes Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Exchange, Lync Online and other services. Office 365 will be available beginning in the first half of next year.

And while Microsoft was celebrating its approval, the General Services Administration announced plans to become the first federal agency to move its email and collaboration tools to Google’s cloud-based service, Google Apps.

Microsoft said it was “disappointed” with the GSA’s selection.

“While we are disappointed we will not have the opportunity to meet the GSA’s internal messaging needs, we will continue to serve its productivity needs through the familiar experience of Microsoft Office and we look forward to understanding more about GSA’s selection criteria – especially around security and architecture,” Micrsoft wrote on its Why Microsoft blog.

Great week for Microsoft’s cloud services

Two good pieces of news for Microsoft on the cloud computing front.

Microsoft has received its FISMA certification. Microsoft CTO Susie Adams said in a company blog post, “Adding FISMA to our existing list of accreditations provides even greater transparency into our security processes and further reinforces our commitment to providing secure cloud computing options to federal agencies.”  

At the same time, the Agriculture Department says it’s ready to move to Microsoft’s cloud services. USDA awarded Dell a contract in May for Microsoft online services.  The move to Microsoft’s Enterprise Messaging Service (EMS) includes e-mail, Web conferencing, document collaboration and instant messaging. Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller reports under the deal Dell will move 120,000 USDA employees out of 21 separate e-mail systems and into the EMS system. The transition will begin within the next month.

All of this news comes on the heels of last week’s announcement by the General Services Administration that it has awarded Unisys a contract to move its email to the cloud using Google Apps for Government.

Cloud lovers converge at ‘Cloudstock’

What do you call hundreds of cloud developers stuck in a room together? Why, Cloudstock, of course.

A cloud computing technical conference – dubbed by some as “The Woodstock for Cloud Developers” took place in San Francisco this week.

Its mission was to “bring the top cloud developers and the top cloud technologies together under one roof, to learn from each other, collaborate, innovate, and drive the future of cloud computing,” according to the Cloudstock website.

The free conference sold out and featured 67 sessions, ranging from everything from understanding API activity to making money with Saas to the future of app deployment to business payments on the cloud.

Organizers live blogged throughout the day and had Tweets automatically filtering in on their site with the hashtag “cloudstock.” Cloudstock also had several demo stations, which highlighted some of the latest cloud technologies in action.

Another unique aspect of the conference was “The Cloudstock Hackathon,” which challenged developers to use their coding skills against one another and create solutions to bridge clouds.

The conference was hosted by force.com and Cloudstock partners included Google, Amazon web services, eBay, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Adobe and Paypal. Microsoft and its cloud computing services were noticeably absent from the conference.

Google Files Suit Against Interior Department



Google has filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department in an attempt to prevent the agency from going ahead with bid requests to host a cloud-based electronic messaging system.

According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Google says they met with Interior Department officials on several occasions asking them to consider them and their “cost saving benefits” and assure them that Google’s applications could care for the agency’s needs.

Google maintains that the Interior Department’s request for quotations was written to prevent the company from competing because it required the system to include the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.

In April of 2010 – after a year of communicating with the Interior Department about competing for the contract – Google says they were informed by Interior Department Chief Technology Officer William Corrington that a “path forward had already been chosen” for the service, and that there was no opportunity for Google to compete because it did not comply with Interior Department security requirements, according to the lawsuit.

The contract is estimated to pay $59 million over five years.

Google filed the lawsuit with its partner Onix Networking on Oct. 29.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google and Microsoft are also competing for a contract to consolidate and modernize email at the General Services Administration.

NOAA pilots cloud solutions

Today, the FCB hears from Joe Klimavicz, chief information officer and director of high performance computing and communications at NOAA.

He tells us about some pilot programs they’re running in order to see if cloud is the correct solution for them.

“It’s a great, flexible, open environment allowing access and interoperability between the different environments, and [could reduce the] complexity and maintenance of our environment. I think that we’re helping a lot of organizations go through the FISMA certification and accreditation. So, I think that cloud computing is coming into its own.

We’ve run pilots with Google Apps, and also Microsoft’s BPOS — their Business Productivity Online Suite. We also have a pilot with Everbridge, the emergency notification system — and [we are] trying to make sure that during an emergency we can reach all of our employees. As scattered about the country as we are [with] a lot of planes and ships and remote [locations], that’s a challenge, but we think that that’s the way to go there.

Also, we’ve been working with GSA on the certification and accreditation, so we’re following what’s going on there. That’s been a big hurdle, I think, [but] it’s coming about. We understand where we need to be from a security perspective.

I also think that service level agreements that include exit strategies — I think everyone understands that once you get into the cloud, you need to make sure that you can get out or change your business model if that is necessary.

So, to me this makes sense. The technology is there. . . . [Our work] is all characterized as pilots. We’ve got a lot of innovative and creative folks at NOAA that tend to want to use state of the art technologies, and I don’t try to discourage that at all.

I think what we need to do is take advantage of all this technology and look at [it], and then it’s my job to sort through all the emerging technologies [and decide] which ones are real, [and] which ones can be supported in the long term to best meet our mission requirements.”

Hear more of Joe Klimavicz’s interview on Ask the CIO.

Friday cloud news round up

Today, we bring you your weekly cloud news round up.

• As Microsoft continued a full-court press to get its partner companies to sell cloud-computing services, some of them were still scratching their heads over whether Microsoft’s advances in cloud computing could end up biting into a chunk of their own businesses. The Seattle Times reports that questions came as Microsoft announced new products and sales-support programs at its Worldwide Partner Conference this week that are aimed at helping partners make the jump. About 13,000 people representing companies that resell, build on and sell services based on Microsoft products are attending the conference at the Washington Convention Center.
• Analyst firm, Gartner, published a set of guidelines intended to ease relationships between cloud vendors and users. As cloud computing becomes more pervasive, the ecosystem (including vendors and analysts) is seeking ways to align expectations among relevant parties, ZDNet reports. Gartner specified “six rights and one responsibility of service customers that will help providers and consumers establish and maintain successful business relationships:”
• Navatar Group, a global Salesforce.com partner and Value Added Reseller, has introduced free cloud computing CRM for financial services firms. Officials with Navatar Group said that the company is now providing free CRM for eight months, to help one prepare for the expected rebound in the worldwide financial markets, TMCNet reports. Company officials said that this would help financial firms to get pre-built software-as-a-service for their business up and running within a day or two. They will also get the underlying force.com seats from Salesforce.com (News – Alert) free as part of this promotion.
• Information technology company IBM on Thursday announced a new IBM Cloud Computing Competence Centre in Ehningen, Germany, TradingMarket.com reports. Located in Ehningen, Germany, home to IBM’s largest data centre in Europe, the new facility will host a range of technology platforms and optimised service delivery processes and, according to the company, will provide a broad range of cloud solutions and services to clients locally and internationally.

Cloud tool helped Florida with 2010 Census count

The 2010 Census is over, but many are still talking about the new technologies that were used for the count this time around.

Gail Thomas is vice president for state and local government at Microsoft, and explains that she and others at the company worked on a project called MyFloridaCensus, which helped the state of Florida count citizens during the Census.

She tells Fed Cloud Blog all about the goal of the tool.

GT: We were excited to partner with the state of Florida on this cloud solution from Microsoft, which is all about enhancing the efforts around ensuring that they had a complete count of residents during the 2010 Census.

Really, it was meant to sort of supplement the door-to-door canvassing. . . . This solution is a final push to be able to count state residents and it’s through a website called myfloridacensus.gov. It’s a web-based application which allows . . . citizens to provide dynamic feedback and visual representations of that feedback. It’s really an innovative way to capture census information and to really have citizens take part in gathering that information.

It’s an opportunity for citizens to speak, as well, on what could help improve their community.

FCB: Is this [a place] where people can comment on a blog or take pictures? Give our listeners a little bit more information on that front.

GT: For starters, it’s hosted on Windows Azure, which is our cloud platform. It runs using Silverlight for cross-browser compatibility, as well. With the support of a Bing maps interface . . . It allows visitors to really share their experiences, provide feedback. [It is] an opportunity for social, user generated experiences around the census information count that they’re doing. [There] are visual representations in terms of providing feedback, so it really is sort of an interactive type of a program.

FCB: You mentioned Azure — and we know, talking with other people from Microsoft Federal . . . that it recently launched. Define Azure — what is it — and talk a little about cloud computing. How has it evolved, and what’s Microsoft doing in the world of the cloud with Azure right now?

GT: Our strategy around the cloud and hosted offerings is really broad and comprehensive.

We provide software in the cloud, which is software delivered as a service — things like your traditional email and collaboration type activities that people can do in the cloud.

Then, we provide infrastructure in the cloud and platform in the cloud, and Azure is our platform in the cloud, which allows people to develop applications in the cloud. It is language agnostic, so its completely open. . . . [Azure] allows applications that are hosted up there the ability to expand and contract the use of the server space, and it helps reduce the overall cost of those solutions when they’re not in peak use.

So, MyFloridaCensus, for example — there’s obviously a peak usage time that will die down. . . . It really is very cost effective as far as a solution goes and really provides a lot of flexibility. Another good example of that is we’ve got a solution called Hey Gov, which was built from the Miami 311 solution, which is a 311 online solution for citizens to be able to record non-emergency type incidents, and see exactly what the status of that incident is online.

FCB: So, are you doing anything like this or looking to do anything like this with other states or other local governments?

GT: Absolutely. . . . This solution that we worked on with Miami 311 now has a broader applicability — Hey Gov — and we’re starting to talk to a number of cities that are interested in doing similar things with a 311 system in the cloud, as well.

Capitol Hill looks at cloud

And now, your weekly cloud news round up!

• Federal agencies are moving into the cloud, but what does the legislative branch think of this? Rep. Edolphus Towns (D.-N.Y.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, recently held a hearing about the issue. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra and Greg Wilshusen, director of Information Security Issues at the GAO, both gave testimony about the issue. Fed Cloud Blog will bring you details next week.
• IBM has reached a deal with the European Union on cloud. PCWorld reports that a consortium will be established to research new cloud-computing models to reduce the cost of hosting and maintaining Internet-based services.
• Microsoft is cutting hundreds of jobs worldwide as it plans to create new cloud-focused positions down the road. TechFlash is reporting that many of the cuts are going to happen in marketing departments. Some, but not all, employees are expected to apply for other jobs within the company.
• Cloud-based email is becoming the new battleground, apparently. Newsweek reports that companies like Microsoft, Google and others are increasingly pushing to have their customers move email services into the cloud.
• What should you ask your cloud provider, now that you have decided to make the move? ReadWriteCloud recently posted 12 questions that all IT managers should posit — or, at least, consider — before hiring a service provider. Check them out!