Cloud Musings by Kevin L. Jackson

Join Me at the Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:17:00 +0000

Please join me at the Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit in Orlando, Florida, June 18-20, 2013, where my session topic will be "Cloud Service Integration: Increasing Business Value and IT Operational Excellence".

Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit 2013 will help I&O leaders apply authoritative thinking, leading-edge strategies and tactical best practices to their enterprise I&O planning and initiatives. This informative session will explore how Cloud computing can deliver substantial benefits and operational technology efficiencies to an organization. Through the use of several recent multi-cloud services integration case studies, we will examine how secure command and control of hybrid technology infrastructure delivers IT operational excellence and better business agility and value. This presentation will give you new insight about how to create and execute a practical strategy for cloud computing adoption across your enterprise. Registration is available online.

See you there!

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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Five Years of Cloud Musings!!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:03:00 +0000

http://kevinljackson.blogspot.com/2008/05/hello-world-april-18-2008.html

"Sunday, April 18, 2008

Hello World ! - April 18, 2008

I've been toying with the idea of doing a blog for about six months now. Initially I didn't see how any of my contributions to the blogosphere would matter to the world. The importance of this view, however, waned as I became more and more absorbed by the power of Web 2.0. As my participation in these technologies (Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, wikis, etc.) increased, I began to understand the uniqueness of my personal interactions. This made the idea of doing a blog important on a personal level. As my on-line network grew, I then realized that a blog is not really for the rest world. It is really a most effective means for conversing with you own personal, on-line network. So today, I start my blog and in so doing, I start my public conversation in earnest."

That was my very first post five years ago last month. Thank you all for allowing me to share my thoughts with you. The benefit I have gain from this and other online interactions have been immense! I only hope that you have also found my musings worthwhile.

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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Global Interoperability Consortium's Cloud Computing Project Detailed at NATO Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:12:00 +0000

PRESS RELEASE
April 30, 2013, 2:30 p.m. ET

Eric Vollmecke of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium reports

the proliferation of geospatial information will pose problems for disaster

responders and describes a project designed to move critical data more

efficiently using an open cloud-based infrastructure

WASHINGTON, April 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Managing and disseminating the rapidly increasing amount of geospatial data will be a huge challenge for governments and civilians responding to the world's next big disaster, Eric Vollmecke of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) told 350 global leaders at the NATO Network Enabled Capability conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, April 23-25.

"From an operational perspective, there is an insatiable appetite for overhead imagery to build situational awareness. Currently, platforms keep growing to collect and disseminate the necessary information. This information is not timely in its response, it's unwieldy in its deployment and it lacks the flexibility to enable cross-domain interoperability," said Vollmecke. "Unless we get our arms around all of this, the amount of data will be overwhelming and we will miss precious days trying to get the right information to the right international stakeholders so they can do their work and not sit waiting on the sidelines."

Vollmecke said the use of a cloud computing environment will improve the ability to quickly share critical information between nations and non-governmental organizations. He described the Cloud Concept and Demonstration project that NCOIC is working on for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The NGA project is a collaborative effort by NCOIC and its member-companies to show the interoperability and movement of data in an open cloud-based infrastructure. NGA is providing unclassified data that supports a scenario depicting the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The project builds on a series of successful lab interoperability demonstrations based on Haiti that NCOIC conducted in 2010.

"In Haiti, we collected a huge amount of data compared to the Tasmanian tsunami of 2004. Tomorrow the amount of data could be 100 fold and one organization alone will not be able to manage the inputs," said Vollmecke, who is also a major general in the U.S. Air National Guard and, while on active duty, commanded two airlift wings during the 2010 Haitian crisis. "With the NGA community cloud project, NCOIC is testing a collaborative, real-time environment that has both suppliers and consumers of data at different security levels."

Information technology solutions provider NJVC is serving as team leader of the NGA project and participants include Boeing, The Aerospace Corporation and Open Geospatial Consortium. "NCOIC has assembled a team you would not normally see on a government-led project," Vollmecke told the NATO audience. "Using a consortium is the most rapid and effective way to facilitate the advancement and deployment of technology. The parties can set aside their traditional roles and aren't subject to the contractual and legal walls that typically are put up between government and contractors. The exchange of information and ideas is more free-flowing."

Vollmecke, who is NCOIC program director, reported that Cycle One of the NGA project is complete and the cloud infrastructure has been defined and built, with the team establishing standards and processes, utilizing best practices, and addressing potential problems such as ownership, bandwidth, latency, availability, access and security.

In Cycle Two, set to begin in May, NCOIC member-companies will test out the infrastructure. They will function as "actors" -- information consumers and providers like police, firefighters, rescue workers, medical personnel, etc. -- who plug into the clouds and use the geospatial data to activate unique, sometimes proprietary, applications that demonstrate end-user capabilities.

"The key is to have a core or resident capability in the cloud that can be rapidly expanded on demand, when there is an event or disaster," said Vollmecke. "This will free up intelligence analysts to work their problems, while putting geospatial information into the hands of other users. Cloud technology can improve everyone's capability and effectiveness, while reducing cost, time and risk."

About NCOIC

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium's core capability is enabling cross-domain interoperability among and between such areas as aerospace, civil and military operations, air traffic management, health care and more. NCOIC is a global not-for-profit organization with more than 60 members representing 12 countries. It has an eight-year history of developing net-centric skills and tools that help its members and customers to operate effectively across diverse global market sectors and domains. For more information, visit www.ncoic.org

SOURCE Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium
/Web site: www.ncoic.org

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

IBM Debate Series - What’s Next in IT?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:30:00 +0000

Next week I will be participating in the inaugural session of What’s Next in IT Debate Series, a new program of authentic debates and conversations on key technology topics. Sponsored by IBM, The Debate Series is an ongoing series of social video debates, held on Spreecast.com (a browser based social video site much like Google hangouts). The first What’s Next in IT debate will be a stimulating discussion on just when and why infrastructure really matters when it comes to building and managing clouds.

My good friend David Linthicum will be moderating this first verbal battle. Leading technology publications frequently name David among the top 10 enterprise technologists in the world. He is a true thought leader in the industry, and an expert in complex distributed systems, including cloud computing, data integration, service oriented architecture (SOA), and big data systems. As the author of over 13 books on computing with over 3,000 published articles, as well as radio and TV appearances as a computing expert, he is often quoted in major business and technology publications. In addition, David is a frequent keynote presenter at industry conferences, with over 500 presentations given in the last 20 years. Along with me, the other panelist are:

Frank Degilio - Enterprise architect with an understanding of end to end infrastructure. Provides architectures for businesses worldwide that can tie mainframes, distributed systems and specialty appliances in a cohesive end to end solution. Can apply latest technologies to current business problems to increase IT efficiency. ·

Frank Scavo - President of Computer Economics. With over 30 years of experience, he has led or participated in business strategy, IT strategy, and business improvement projects for organizations in a broad range of industries, including medical devices, pharmaceuticals, foods, consumer products, wholesale and retail distribution, high tech electronics, and information services.

To attend, just go to http://ibm.co/17sZlL8 to register, then click the link in the email you will receive on April 29 to attend at 1pm EDT on April 30.

Join us April 30 at 1pm EDT, 10am PDT. Register now at ibm.co/17sZlL8

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

Lisbon Bound: NATO Network Enabled Capability Conference 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:58:00 +0000

This week I will have the honor of attending the 2013 NNEC Conference at the Corinthia Hotel in Lisbon, Portugal. The NNEC conference is an annual event which has been sponsored by HQ Supreme Allied Command Transformation (HQ SACT) since 2004. The conference is a major driver to promote NNEC within NATO, the nations, industry and other stakeholders in the civilian and military environment. This annual conference draws international attention as seen during the 2012 event held in Vienna, Austria with registration from more than 35 countries and 415 attendees. During this year’s event Major General Eric Vollmecke from the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will be presenting information on its Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) Demonstration.

Highlighted in a recent Government Computer News article, the project supports a concept proposed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to demonstrate the interoperability and movement of data in an open-cloud-based demonstration. NGA will provide unclassified data that supports a scenario depicting the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. NCOIC’s foundational model is based on a series of successful lab interoperability demonstrations, also based on Haiti, it conducted four times during 2010. For this effort, NJVC is providing secure cloud brokerage services to the NCOIC using its first-to-market Cloudcuity Management Portal. NJVC’s partners are Cloudcuity Management Portal, The Boeing Company and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

Hosted through the secure Cloudcuity Management Portal, NCOIC members will have access to CloudScope, an automated set of evaluation tools that:

Determines cloud infrastructure feasibility
Estimates cloud infrastructure cost and benefits
Conducts physical capacity for cloud translations
Matches application requirements to cloud provider capabilities based on features and functionality
compares provider costs and quality of service

Be on the lookout for more conference news next week!

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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Demystifying PaaS for Federal Government

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:42:00 +0000

Join us on April 16, 2013 at 1 PM EDT to remove the mystery surrounding Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for Federal Government

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8966264786104832512

The PaaS market is plagued with confusion, and agencies are slow to adopt technologies that they do not fully understand. With the high costs of software development, the Government stands to save billions of dollars by adopting PaaS and other cloud technologies. The Federal CIO’s office suggests that Shared Platforms will improve efficiencies by building once and using many times – but what does that mean to Federal buyers?

This FREE event will help Federal Government better understand PaaS to make better decisions and facilitate adoption. Please join distinguished panelists (from NIST, GSA, NASA, Cisco, NJVC and Dell) as we attempt to demystify the topic of Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Government.

The format will be one hour with 5 minutes presentations by each of five panelists, followed by dynamic Q&A. The format will be similar to the recent 'Shared Cloud Services in Government' event, in which panelists from GSA, NIST, the Canadian Cloud Council and Industry helped raise awareness to the Federal cloud computing community about Shared Services in Government.

This event is hosted by FedPlatform.org (www.fedplatform.org) and sponsored by NJVC's Cloudcuity team (www.cloudcuity.com). We look forward to "seeing" you there!

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

How Cloud Brokerage Enables a Practical Path to Cloud IT

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:42:00 +0000

Join us on Wed, Apr 17, 2013 from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT to explore how to use cloud brokerage to move efficiently and securely to the cloud.

More and more business and governmental agencies are migrating to the cloud but the reality is that move can often be slow, painful, and complicated. Even expert system integrators are struggling to stay relevant and help their customers use cloud in a practical way. Challenges that siphon away time and money and introduce risk and governance issues include:

- Designing and matching different applications to the best cloud offering
- Learning to provision and integrate using phone book-sized cloud API guides
- Developing new purchasing processes and verifying complex bills from multiple cloud providers
- Combating cloud sprawl and Shadow IT
- Not having real-time visibility, predictability, and governance of cloud cost, SLAs, and utilization

Join our guests Forrester Research Principal Analyst Stefan Ried, Ph.D., and Gravitant customer, Kevin Jackson, Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Services, NJVC, as they cut through the hype associated with cloud. Stefan will discuss how the new cloud brokerage model can address these challenges for IT organizations, and Kevin will share how Gravitant’s cloudMatrix platform enables a next generation service delivery platform for system integrators.

Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4653969186675523328

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

NJVC Cloudcuity Management Portal to Provide Secure Cloud Brokerage Services to NCOIC for NGA

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

CHANTILLY, Va., March 28, 2013 — NJVC^® will lead efforts to provide secure cloud brokerage services to the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium using its first-to-market Cloudcuity™ Management Portal during a series of 2013 geospatial community cloud demonstrations that will be conducted on behalf of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). NJVC’s partners are The Aerospace Corporation, The Boeing Company and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

Hosted through the secure Cloudcuity Management Portal, NCOIC members will have access to CloudScreen™, an automated set of evaluation tools that:

Determines cloud infrastructure feasibility
Estimates cloud infrastructure cost and benefits
Conducts physical capacity for cloud translations
Matches application requirements to cloud provider capabilities based on features and functionality
Compares provider costs and quality of service

“NJVC is honored that NCOIC chose the Cloudcuity Management Portal as its brokerage of choice to offer cloud services to the geospatial community,” said Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager of NJVC Cloudcuity. “This NCOIC demonstration is significant as it will represent a new procurement model for the geospatial community, which is at the frontlines of protecting and responding to national and international crises in times of conflict. Procurement of cloud services will be less complicated, making deployments to the cloud easier and more efficient than ever before. This will benefit first responders and other non-traditional NGA users.”

Team members’ unique contributions include:

· The Boeing Company: Open architecture GeoServices pooling through a Boeing-developed Geospatial Interoperability Dashboard through integration initially using several solutions: Ozone dashboards, OpenGeo platform and Boeing’s geospatial data server.

· The Aerospace Corporation: An OpenStack-based cloud and a virtual organization management system patterned after the one used by the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid

· OGC: Expertise to monitor, offer advice and report on the use of OGC standards throughout the demonstration period

Once feasibility is assured and providers are selected, Cloudcuity Management Portal users will leverage the integrated virtual application and data center manager services to design virtual data centers through a user-friendly console. Once the design is finalized and approved through an automated review process, virtual resources will be provisioned simultaneously, across the group of selected providers through the cloud service bus, which has application program interface connections to different cloud providers.

The Cloudcuity Management Portal also will provide advanced monitoring, consolidated billing, chargeback and policy governance to ensure provider compliance and NCOIC satisfaction.

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About NJVC^®

With a focus on information technology automation, NJVC^® specializes in supporting highly secure, complex IT enterprises in business- and mission-critical environments, particularly for the intelligence and defense communities. We offer a wide breadth of IT and strategic solutions to our customers, ranging from strategic consulting to managed flexible services in five business areas: Cloud Services, Cyber Security, Data Center Services, IT Services and Print Solutions. We partner with our customers to support their missions with security-cleared, dedicated and talented employees ready to deploy globally. To learn more, visit www.njvc.com.

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com
Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

CloudCheckr : Amazon Complexity Challenges Many Users

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:40:00 +0000

A recently released infographic from CloudCheckr (http://cloudcheckr.com/) sheds quite a bit of light on the importance of expert advice when an enterprise decides to deploy to the cloud. When AWS made Trusted Advisor free for the month of March, they took that opportunity to conduct an internal survey of their customers’ usage. CloudCheckr compared the initial scans of 400 users against a list of 125+ best practice checks. The survey was limited to users with over 10 EC2 instances. In aggregate, the users represent a total of just over 16,000 EC2 instances.

They categorized survey results into 3 main categories: Cost, Availability, and Security; and that over 99% of their users were operating with at least one serious best practice exception. Their primary conclusion was that although cost often grabs the headlines, users suffer from a large number of availability and security issues.

When considering availability, there were numerous serious configuration issues. Users repeatedly failed to optimally configure Auto Scaling and ELB. The failure to create sufficient EBS snapshots was an almost universal issue. When looking at security, they saw a smaller number of issues. However, the ones that did arise were very serious. Specifically, in S3, they saw nearly 1 in 5 users allowed unfettered access to their buckets through “Upload /Delete” or “Edit Permissions” set to everyone. As we explained in an earlier whitepaper, anyone using a simple bucket finder tool could locate and access these buckets.

In short, typical Amazon Web Services users are not following relatively well know best practices when they deploy to the cloud. This is not an indictment of the cloud computing model, but rather a realization that most cloud users can benefit greatly from the advice and support of a professional cloud deployment team.

Specific conclusion as provided by CloudChekr, are :

96% of all users experienced at least 1 cost related exception (with many experiencing multiple exceptions).
Price optimization remains a large hurdle for AWS users
Nearly 98% suffered from at least 1 availability related exception.
44% of our users had at least one serious security related exception present

Additional observations:

COST

Spot instances worry users – there is a general concern of: “what if the price spikes and my instance is terminated?” This fear exists despite the fact that spikes occur very rarely, warnings are available, and proper configuration can significantly mitigate this “surprise termination” risk.
It is difficult and time consuming to map the cost scenarios for purchasing reserved instances. The customers who did make this transition had cobbled together home grown spreadsheets as a way of supporting this business decision.
The intricacies of matching the configurations between on demand instances and reserved instances while taking into consideration autoscaling and other necessary configurations were daunting. Many felt it was not worth the effort.
Amazon's own process for regularly lowering the costs is a deterrent to purchasing RIs. This is especially true for RIs with a 3 year commitment. In fact, within the customers who did purchase RI, none expressed a desire to commit to 3 year commitments. All supported their refusal by referencing the regular AWS price drops and the fact that they could not accurately predict their business requirements 3 years out.

AVAILABILITY

Users were generally surprised with the exceptions. They believed that they “had done everything right” but then realized that they underestimated the complexity of AWS.
Users were often unsure of exactly why something needed to be remedied. The underlying architecture of AWS continues to unfold and users are not always familiar with the latest AWS twist.
AWS dynamism played a large role in the number of exceptions. Users commented that they often fixed exceptions and, after a week of usage, found new exceptions had arisen.
Users remained very happy with the overall level of service from AWS. Despite the exceptions which diminish overall functionality, the users still found that AWS offered tremendous functionality advantages.

SECURITY

The AWS management console offered little functionality for helping with S3 security. It does not present a useful means of monitoring and controlling S3 inventory and usage. In fact, we found that most of our users were surprised when the inventory was reported. They often had 300-500% more buckets, objects and storage than they expected.
S3 is often an afterthought for users. EC2 commands more user attention. Users often failed to create and implement formal policies.
S3 cost was contributing to factor to the problems. Given the low cost, team members throw up objects and buckets at will while secure in the knowledge that they can store huge amounts of data at a minimal cost. Similarly, the low costdisincentives users to perform inventories from each region and perform an audit of objects and policies/configurations. Since users did not know what they had stored, they could not determine the level of security.

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

NJVC Announces Winner of Cloudcuity AppDeployer Contest Pilot at George Mason University

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:01:00 +0000

CHANTILLY, Va., Feb. 25, 2013—NJVC, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in northern Virginia, is pleased to announce the winner of the George Mason University (GMU) Student PaaS Developer Contest. For the contest, students used the Cloudcuity AppDeployer platform as a service (PaaS) to develop business software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in the cloud. The winning team entry, “Nimbus Solution Scheduler,” is a workforce scheduling application.

The Nimbus Solution Scheduler team members—James Hays (team leader), Christopher Le, Anthony Nester and Ed Rubins—each received a monetary award and certificate for their innovative application. The students were honored at a special ceremony on February 22 during National Engineering Week at the Volgeneau School of Engineering Nguyen Engineering Building, Fairfax, Va. Donald Gantz, Ph.D., chair of the GMU Applied Information Technology Department attended the ceremony.
The GMU contest is serving as a pilot for a regional contest for university students to design SaaS applications for a scholarship award and additional rewards. This contest will launch during the first quarter of 2013.

NJVC offered the Cloudcuity AppDeployer PaaS, along with associated training, to students enrolled in the Applied Information Technology Department’s Introductory Cloud Computing course at GMU’s Prince William campus, led by Adjunct Professor F. Brett Berlin. AppDeployer provided students with online tools for building and deploying software applications for sale on the Amazon EC2 cloud computing infrastructure. Using AppDeployer’s wizard tool, students developed SaaS applications that can be provisioned on demand by end users. The AppDeployer software development kit also is available to students who wish to build advanced applications that integrate with other Web services—for instance, maps, big data or language translation. The goal of the contest is for students to receive hands-on experience in all three major cloud service models as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology: infrastructure as a service, PaaS and SaaS.

“NJVC is confident about the ease of use of Cloudcuity AppDeployer,” said Cary Landis, NJVC senior architect, Cloudcuity AppDeployer. “NJVC sponsored the pilot contest at GMU, and will sponsor a national contest in early 2013, to show how easy and efficient it is for any developer—from novice to expert—to create and publish real business applications for sale using AppDeployer.”

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About NJVC

With a focus on information technology automation, NJVC specializes in supporting highly secure, complex IT enterprises in business- and mission-critical environments, particularly for the intelligence and defense communities. We offer a wide breadth of IT and strategic solutions to our customers, ranging from strategic consulting to managed flexible services in five business areas: Cloud Services, Cyber Security, Data Center Services, IT Services and Print Solutions. We partner with our customers to support their missions with security-cleared, dedicated and talented employees ready to deploy globally. To learn more, visit www.njvc.com.

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com
Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

Bahrain International eGovernment Forum 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:37:00 +0000

I am honored to announce that I will be a speaker at the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum, April 8-10, 2013, being held at the Ritz-Carlton Bahrain Hotel and Spa, in Manama, Bahrain.

Under the Patronage of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology (SCICT), the highly-anticipated Bahrain International eGovernment Forum has cemented its place as one of the region's leading ICT events, growing steadily and expanding its reach year-by-year. It aims to share and exchange productive technological concepts, exhibit and highlight innovations as well as provide a platform for the latest technological practices and trends through featuring numerous up-to-date topics and workshops that embrace Innovation and Open Data, Mobile Trends, Cloud Computing and Shared Services, Social Networks, and eGovernment.

Planned workshops include:

ICT and Entrepreneurship - Aims to deliver useful insights to attendees on essential tools to create entrepreneurial businesses and induce entrepreneurial values to existing business enterprises. The workshop will also address the importance of ICT orientation and development in businesses through selective case studies and bring up critical factors affecting the growth of business enterprises in general. An important element of the workshop is to focus on the topic of innovation and entrepreneurship vis-a-vis business development.

Mobility - Aims to discuss the emerging opportunities for mobile platforms, as this arena requires a mind shift for organizations as well as developers of traditional desktop and web-based. The hands-on workshop attendees will have the opportunity to interact with world-class experts in this field as they are going to cover how to use technology to develop mobile devices, provide ideas to attendees, showcase success stories as well as present essential toolkits and tips on how to enhance mobile apps for organizations.

eGovernance - eGovernance workshop will highlight various aspects such as cutting edge techniques, benefits of using technologies and electronic methods to serve stakeholders, how to govern the organization more effectively through focusing on the benefits of electronic governance for organizations, benefits of eGovernance for service users, as well as increasing interaction and communication. The workshop aims is to prove the importance of using new improved technologies to better sustain organizations.

IT Talent Management - Aims to cooperate with highly talented information and technology skilled individuals by attracting, preserving and gaining their achievements to improve business.

Risk Reality - Whether it is information security or our daily actions, we often perceive certain actions as being risky. Most people perceive flying in an airplane to be very risky, yet have no problem sitting behind the wheel of an automobile which has a higher incident of death and injury. What drives those perceptions and how can we make people better understand and judge risk?

The Social Media Strategic Planning Process - Strategic Planning in social media is understanding broad strategies and visions for the organization, then drilling down to specific tactics and tools. It is where the foundation is set for implementing social media into any small or large company. This workshop will assist in determining how social media can best be leveraged to advance the greater goals of the organization and align a social media strategic plan with overall strategic objectives.

The Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago of 33 islands located in the heart of the Arabian Gulf. Bahrain is an Arabic word which literally means two seas. The reason behind its naming is that it contains two sources of water; sweet water from its pure springs, and salty water from the surrounding seas. The other reason is due to the existence of the North and South waters of the gulf, which separate Bahrain from the Iranian and Arabic coast.

Bahrain has grown substantially in the past 10 years. During the beginnings of the millennium, Bahrain realized that its oil reserves are diminishing, and are no longer a dependable source for the countries' income. Therefore, finding a new source for Bahrain to keep growing was ultimately necessary. Since then, Bahrain channeled its efforts into diversifying its economy through being open to new businesses, and starting up new promising developments and projects.

SEE YOU THERE !!!

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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Why the cloud will shake markets.

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 13:34:00 +0000

"Recently, I predicted that in 2013, cloud computing will provide the biggest disruption information technology has experienced in 25 years. These impacts extend to the $128 billion data center industry, which will never be the same as the traditional business model is disrupted, and new rules for success are written."

This is how I started my most recent article for SC Magazine In it, I address the how the datacenter marketplace is bifrucating and how operators need to rethink their current business model in order to survive. Data centers that do not evolve – quickly – will face plummeting profit margins as more and more information moves to the cloud.

Please read the article (http://www.scmagazine.com/the-cloud-will-shake-markets/article/276463/) and comment. The industry is currently undergoing an inflexion which will require agressive changes by many.

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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Top 10 Transformational Impacts of the Cloud in 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:39:00 +0000

CHANTILLY, Va., Dec. 20, 2012 — NJVC^®, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in northern Virginia and supplier of Cloudcuity™ AppDeployer, and Virtual Global, a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions based in northern Virginia, have teamed up to offer the top 10 transformational impacts of the cloud in 2013—all of which will transform business and government in the biggest disruption IT has experienced in 25 years.

"The disruptive impact of cloud is uprooting old industries and making way for new ,” said Cary Landis, NJVC senior architect, Cloudcuity AppDeployer and Virtual Global CEO. Whereas change is not new, the rate of change may be accelerating faster than many imagined. “In the coming year, the cloud's impact on business and government strategies will continue to accelerate, and it will be the biggest driver behind major IT decisions. This, in turn, will cause the biggest disruption to the IT industry in the past 25 years.”

1.   Cloud technologies will converge.
The cloud will continue to forge a massive convergence of technologies—similar to the evolution of the cell phone to the smart phone. “The lines between platform as a service (PaaS) and cloud services brokerages will blur into a conceptual operating system for the ‘Web as a platform’—providing tools to allow users to take advantage of multiple cloud solutions at once, and bringing the cloud closer to the end user in more meaningful ways," according to Landis.

2.   Custom software will hit the cloud.
For years, everyone has been talking about the “low-hanging fruit” of commodity email and infrastructure. According to Kevin L. Jackson, NJVC vice president and general manager, cloud services, and Landis, non-commodity custom software is beginning to move to the cloud in a meaningful manner. “As of this year, PaaS and other cloud technologies have reached a maturity level that allows developers and integrators to build highly customized, complex offerings on the cloud," Landis said.

3.   Integration will become the new “killer app.”
The term “killer app” generally refers to the technology that’s so necessary it drives adoption of a computing paradigm. “Complexity is the problem of the cloud era,” Jackson said. “The cloud is evolving into a hodgepodge of disparate cloud services from vendors that are scattered all over the world.” According to Jackson and Landis, IT professionals will turn to cloud services brokers to manage the growing complexity problem by integrating heterogeneous infrastructure services; whereas software developers will turn to PaaS for integrating disparate Web services to deliver seamless user experiences to their customers.

4.   India and outsourcing countries will drive industry adoption of PaaS worldwide.
“The software development outsourcing industry thrives on the value proposition of more for less, as it is what it does well,” said Landis. In 2013, PaaS will be adopted by companies in India and in other major outsourcing countries in a rapid and notable fashion. It will cause a ripple effect throughout industry because these outsourcing companies are so integral to modern business operations. The cloud makes geographic boundaries irrelevant.

5.   Major data centers will go undergo a “survival-of-the-fittest” scenario.
Winners will emerge in the data center shakeout, as many large data centers will close and sell assets, or become acquired and consolidate. "Ironically, the cloud movement spawned a ‘gold rush’ to build new data centers at a time when the stated goal of the cloud was to reduce the number of data centers," said Landis. "The market is maturing, and the ultimate result will be a ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ scenario as many legacy data centers will shut their doors and as many data center customers decide to move some of their data to the cloud." Cloud services brokerages will play a larger role for data center service providers to help their customers sort out the confusion and effectively manage an increasing number of cloud service providers, according to Jackson.

6.   Health IT will adopt PaaS to replace niche “dinosaur” apps.
Health IT will adopt PaaS to replace niche “dinosaur apps.” “The problem with health IT is that the enterprise systems have grown too large to merely replace, but there are limits to what they can do,” said Landis. “For the healthcare industry to move forward and achieve the goals set out in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, the cloud must play a major role in the next generation of healthcare IT. Healthcare CIOs are looking at how much it will cost to upgrade their HITECH-compliant systems—and they are finding that proprietary models will leave them with unfavorable lock-in, while others in the healthcare industry embracing the cloud march forward.”

7.   Organizations will rapidly adopt cloud services brokerages.
The need to use multiple cloud services providers to manage multiple functions will create a fast adoption of the cloud services brokerage model: either via a new internal role or external source, like the NJVC Cloudcuity Management Portal. “The new role of cloud services brokerages will be further defined and evolve over the next five years to provide niche services to organizations moving to the cloud, but also realizing that their specific IT needs will require the use of more than one cloud services provider,” said Jackson.

8.   The U.S. government will re-think major IT contracts.
Large system integrators, whose success long depended on very expensive, highly complex and customized, on-premise solutions, will redefine their practices and their overall operating and profit models, especially as more businesses go beyond basic, "out-of-the-box" cloud services and turn to the cloud for more customized implementations. U.S. government agencies will begin to add new requirements to several major IT contracts. According to Jackson: “The federal government is in many ways leading the path toward the cloud. In 2013 there will be a shakeup in government contracting. Incumbent system integrators will no longer be able to rest on past successes, as the government continues to transform itself and move toward the cloud, and as new cloud service providers offer innovative and cost-effective solutions geared specifically to the federal marketplace.”

9.   Innovation and entrepreneurship will hit overdrive.
Entrepreneurship will go into overdrive, especially as full-featured, "idea-to-revenue" platforms, like NJVC Cloudcuity AppDeployer, take developers from concept, to development and to deployment and sales. This will trigger a new wave of innovation, entrepreneurship and disruptive startups that will make things interesting for system integrators. “We’ve already seen an incredible wave of high-tech innovation, and the emergence of flourishing incubators and accelerators," said Jackson. “Cloud platforms, for the first time, provide these innovators with all the tools they need to succeed, without requiring a multi-million dollar investment.”

10.   Cloud adoption will move from an option to a "must have."
Cloud adoption will move away from something buyers purchase with surplus budget money to a “must have” that replaces the traditional IT enterprise business model. “Until recently, managers have viewed cloud computing as a proof-of-concept project or something that can be done or piloted with extra budget money," said Landis. "The reality is the cloud's value can only be fully realized when traditional and more costly ways of storing, using and securing data are replaced with new business models that take advantage of ‘fast-and-lean’ cloud services. In the coming year, companies will accomplish this by halting old projects, re-thinking old contracts, and shifting funds to affordable and innovative cloud services that can transform the IT enterprise."

###

About NJVC^®

About Virtual Global

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the SaaS Maker™ cloud platform for building SaaS applications without programming; TeamLeader™, a project management 2.0 software for tracking and reporting on virtual teams in real-time; and Cloudipedia, a website that brings cloud computing information to entrepreneurs. Since 1995, Virtual Global’s technologies have served commercial and federal customers worldwide with enterprise-class IT needs.

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com
Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

GovTech Innovator: Kevin Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:41:00 +0000

Today I am honored to be named a GovTech Innovator by Government Technology. My personal thanks goes out to Hilton Collins for letting me Hangout with him on Google+.

Govtech.com is the online portal to Government Technology, a division of e.Republic, Inc. Government Technology and its sister publications are an award-winning family of magazines covering information technology's role in state and local governments. Through in-depth coverage of IT case studies, emerging technologies and the implications of digital technology on the policies and management of public sector organizations, Government Technology chronicles the dynamics of governing in the information age. Managers, elected officials, CIOs and technology staff at all levels of government gain IT news and event information from Government Technology magazine.

Check out the post at http://www.govtech.com/e-government/GovTech-Innovators-Kevin-Jackson-Federal-Cloud-Computing-Expert.html

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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How Will Technology Impact Your Business in 2020?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:32:00 +0000

by Dennis Brouwer

(Repost from ThinkGig. Thanks for letting me contribute to your ebook!! - Kevin Jackson )

Human-like technology. The potential downfall of the data center. Hyper-personalization of data. These are some of the responses IT leaders gave to us when we asked, “What will business technology look like in 2020?”

In 2020, tech experts say, computers could learn from experience, much like the human brain. The end of the data center as we know it might arrive. And technology will know the most important things about us to help us become more productive.

In our new ebook, Business Technology 2020, the experts — who represent organizations such as Intel, IBM, Frost and Sullivan, Aberdeen, ATLANTIC-ACM and Current Analysis and more — also cover topics that include the cloud, health care, cognitive computing and the role of the CIO, giving a holistic preview of how technology will impact your business in and leading up to 2020.

Download it today!

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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The Government Cloud on KCUR-FM Central Standard with Jabulani Leffall

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:51:00 +0000

A big THANK YOU goes out today to KCUR-FM Central Standard host Jabulani Leffall, producer Matthew Long-Middleton,and associate producer Danie Alexander for having me as a guest on this morning's show!

Today the focus was on the US Government's mandate that federal agencies consider cloud computing as they make new IT investments. Along with Joe Tierney from Umzuzu, a Kansas City cloud service company, we discussed cloud computing benefits and challenges. I also had the opportunity to discuss my new book, GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services.

Hear the podcast online at:
http://kcur.org/post/government-cloud

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

NJVC to Spotlight Cloudcuity at Gartner Data Center Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:31:00 +0000

Las Vegas., Nov. 15, 2012 — NJVC, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, announces it will spotlight its Cloudcuity™ framework for delivering secure and unified cloud management solutions at the Gartner Data Center Conference, December 3 – 6, at The Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino^® in Las Vegas. The company’s cloud brokerage, cyber analytics, IT enterprise management virtual storefront and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) tools will be featured at booth 511 on the exposition floor. Through demonstrations and one-on-one meetings, attendees will be able to learn about the following Cloudcuity solutions:

Cloudcuity AppDeployer – A new and innovative PaaS that allows software developers to quickly create and publish marketable software-as-a-service applications. Using AppDeployer, developers and independent software vendors can start building applications at no cost, and take enterprise-class software systems to market in weeks instead of years.
Cloudcuity Management Portal – A virtual cloud brokerage that delivers comprehensive, easy-to-use reporting and administration tools to help IT organizations analyze the value of the cloud services model by comparing it with current IT operations. Through this tool, customers can rapidly plan a cloud migration and efficiently compare and manage service offerings from an array of cloud service providers.
NJVC Cyber Dashboard™ – An award-winning dashboard that enables the visualization of core devices across an organization’s entire IT enterprise. It allows real-time visualization to quickly resolve any issues without major impact to users and the enterprise in a most cost-efficient manner.
Provisioning Self Service – An innovative, virtual storefront for an enterprise’s software library. Users can easily and virtually search for the software needed for a specific task and request it to be installed on their workstations. PSS also maintains central configuration control of the enterprise.

Kevin L. Jackson, NJVC vice president and general manager, cloud services, also will speak on “Cloud Brokerage Services for Data Center Service Providers” on the afternoon of December 4. Jackson will describe why cloud computing is a disruptive business model, and specifically for the data center services market, how it displaces long-term contracts, significantly reduces margins and threatens the core of the data center business. Jackson will explain how Cloudcuity solutions address these concerns by delivering new revenue streams fueled by the same market forces that threaten traditional data center business models. By highlighting customization, security and customer service, Cloudcuity customers can sell their capabilities as an adjunct with or alternative to commodity cloud services.

Date: Dec. 4, 2012
Time: 4:15 – 5:15 p.m. PST
Location: Venetian Ballroom B, The Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas

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About NJVC

About the Gartner Data Center Conference 2012

The Gartner Data Center Conference is the most comprehensive compilation of sessions and advice on the future of the data center ever held. It offers the latest insights and best practices for all major data center disciplines – servers, operating systems, storage, business continuity and disaster recovery. Additional information is available at www.gartner.com/us/datacenter.

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com
Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

NJVC Cloud Expert Kevin L. Jackson Launches Second Book: GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:22:00 +0000

VIENNA, Va., Nov. 8, 2012—NJVC, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in northern Virginia, is pleased to announce that Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, cloud services, launched his second book, GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services—published by Government Training, Inc. This handbook, geared to IT professionals and senior decision makers in both the public and private sectors, explains how the cloud computing economic model can provide enhanced mission or business capabilities without commensurate increases in resource expenditures.

“Too often in the past federal IT projects ran over budget, were behind schedule or failed to deliver promised functionality,” Jackson said. “The cloud computing economic model can reduce or eliminate the expectation of operations and sustainment costs. The time required to realize mission or business value also is substantially reduced. Through this model, the impossible can suddenly become not only possible, but often can lead to new, cloud-enabled mission or business capabilities.”

GovCloud II also describes the various ways the cloud computing model can be implemented—through infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service—and why the use of cloud brokerage services will transform how organizations will plan, provision and manage their IT enterprises and data.

The book was co-written by Don Philpott, who also was the co-author of Jackson’s first book, GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government Update and Outlook. This book—one of the first of its kind targeted to the federal marketplace—offers an easy, five-step process to help readers understand what cloud computing is, and choose the best cloud-related options to implement to meet their particular organizations’ needs. GovCloud also provides useful information on cloud model administration requirements and industry-wide standards.

Additional information on and purchasing details for GovCloud II are available at http://governmenttraininginc.com/GovCloud-II-Handbook.asp.

Notes to Editors: A limited number of copies of the book are available to interested members of the news media. If interested in receiving a copy for review, email michelle.snyder@njvc.com. A high-res version of the GovCloud book cover and Jackson’s headshot also are available.

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About NJVC

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com
Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

Virtustream a Visionary in Gartner 2012 IaaS Magic Quadrant

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Congratulations to NJVC Cloudcuity partner Virtustream for being positioned as a visionary in the Gartner 2012 IaaS Magic Quadrant!

Magic Quadrants provide a graphical competitive positioning of four types of technology providers, where market growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct:

Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.
Visionaries understand where the market is going or have a vision for changing market rules, but do not yet execute well.
Niche Players focus successfully on a small segment, or are unfocused and do not out-innovate or outperform others.
Challengers execute well today or may dominate a large segment, but do not demonstrate an understanding of market direction.

To appear in the IaaS Magic Quadrant, vendors had to meet, as of June 2012, the following criteria:

They must sell public cloud compute IaaS as a stand-alone service, without the requirement to bundle it with managed hosting, application development, application maintenance or other outsourcing. They may, optionally, also sell a private version of this offering that uses the same architecture but is not multi-tenant.
The service must be enterprise-class, offering 24/7 customer support (including phone support), SLAs, the ability to scale an application beyond the capacity of a single physical server, an allowable VM size of at least eight compute units and 15 GB of RAM, the ability to support secure connectivity to the infrastructure, and support for role-based access control. They must offer this service in a minimum of two data centers, located in different metropolitan areas.
They must be among the top 15 global providers, by Gartner-estimated market share for the evaluated services (public cloud IaaS and standardized private cloud IaaS).

Earlier this month, NJVC and Virtustream announced an alliance to provide the Virtustream xChange (cloud marketplace) to government customers. Under the terms of the agreement, NJVC customers will use xChange technology to shop for on-demand compute services from providers that are looking to sell unused capacity, often at a discount. This service will soon be available to the federal government through the new NJVC Cloudcuity Government Marketplace via the NJVC Cloudcuity Management Portal.

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 02:56:00 +0000

I'm happy and proud to announce the release of my second book, "GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services" by my publisher Government Training Inc.

The public and private sector have vigorously embraced cloud computing and its implementation is increasing efficiency and return on investment with significant savings in cost.

Implementation, however, has not been without problems which is why publication of GovCloud:Cloud Computing for the Business of Government last year was so timely. It contained an easy to understand five step process that explained what cloud computing is all about and what are the best options to meet particular needs. It discussed in detail all the latest developments in this area – from administration requirements to the search for industry-wide standards.

Now authors Kevin Jackson and Don Philpott have followed up this highly-acclaimed manual with GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services, a handbook aimed at IT professionals and senior decision-making managers that outlines and explains an industry-leading approach to cloud transition and adoption.

When properly deployed using the most appropriate services, the cloud computing model provides greatly enhanced mission and business capability without a commensurate increase in resource - time, people or money- expenditures. Too often in the past Federal IT projects ran over budget, were behind schedule, or failed to deliver promised functionality, he said.

Many projects used “grand design” approaches that aimed to deliver functionality every few years, rather than breaking projects into more manageable chunks and demanding new functionality every few quarters. In addition, the Federal Government too often relied on large, custom, proprietary systems when “light technologies” or shared services exist.

Of particular interest are chapters on Cloud Planning, Provisioning and Management which focuses on cloud transition and adoption, and PaaS, which give readers an insightful and true understanding of the power of this platform.

Cloud computing is a new approach in the provisioning and consumption of information technology (IT). While technology is a crucial component, the real value of cloud computing lies in its ability to enable new capabilities or in the execution of current capabilities in more efficient and effective ways. This handbook tells you how and explains in details the options available to you.

For a limited time, Government Training is offering special pricing on cloud computing books. Buy any 2 cloud books and get the third free!!

GovCloud - A five step process designed to help governments at all levels evaluate the business case for, design and implement a robust cloud solution.
GovCloud II - Cloud implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services.
Contracting for Cloud Services - A detailed "how to" contract for cloud services - includes a checklist of 137 contract terms & conditions that need to be considered in your cloud contract.

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

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NJVC® Introduces Cloudcuity™ AppDeployer to Create and Sell Software Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Developers Can Create, Deploy and Publish Apps in the Cloud for Free

Vienna, Va., Oct. 18, 2012 — NJVC^®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces Cloudcuity™ AppDeployer, a new and innovative platform a s a service that allows developers to quickly create and publish software-as-a-service applications for sale in the cloud. Cloudcuity AppDeployer is part of the NJVC Cloudcuity portfolio of cloud offerings.

“Cloudcuity AppDeployer is a game changer for the software development industry,” said Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, NJVC Cloudcuity. “Cloudcuity AppDeployer offers an alternative to writing business applications from scratch the old slow and costly way. With Cloudcuity AppDeployer, developers and independent software vendors can start building applications for free, and potentially take enterprise-class software systems to market in weeks instead of years.”

A key component of AppDeployer empowers developers with point-and-click tools to rapidly prototype and deploy applications without programming. Its software development kit makes it possible to write add-on modules that integrate with open-source, third-party and legacy systems. AppDeployer makes it easy to publish apps for sale; developers merely need to set a price, click a button and their app is instantly available worldwide. AppDeployer also is available as a licensed product for deployment in customers’ own clouds.

The engine behind AppDeployer has been employed by the U.S. government and commercial and academic organizations to build apps for a wide variety of functions, including catalog management, nonprofit management, team management and collaboration and long-term care logistics.

Although AppDeployer is designed for ease of use, it can support the development of complex applications. For instance, NJVC is developing a disaster management system on AppDeployer that integrates Google geospatial services. This enterprise system can be deployed on-demand in crisis-response scenarios by first responders around the globe. The system showcases how Cloudcuity AppDeployer provides on-demand provisioning and application multi-tenancy within large and complex organizations.

Important to software developers in the federal space, AppDeployer -designed apps inherently align with the National Institute of Standards and Technology Reference Architecture for Cloud Computing, encompassing all three major cloud service models: SaaS, PaaS and infrastructure as a service. Cary Landis, NJVC Cloudcuity platform practice lead, was instrumental in the development of the NIST reference architecture, and led a NIST subgroup to clarify the PaaS and other cloud service models.

Cloudcuity is the NJVC framework for delivering cloud service offerings. This framework helps users transition their technology applications to a cloud environment, while cutting spending, improving process and billing inefficiencies and complying with a myriad of regulatory and security requirements.

AppDeployer leverages a platform engine licensed from Virtual Global.

To learn more about the features and benefits of Cloudcuity AppDeployer, visit www.cloudcuity.com or call 703.665.9119.

###

About NJVC^®

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com

Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com

NJVC® Announces the Cloudcuity™ Government Marketplace, Powered by Virtustream’s Secure Cloud xChange

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Vienna, Va., Oct. 4, 2012—NJVC^®, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, and Virtustream, Inc., a leading enterprise cloud software company, today announced a new alliance to provide the Virtustream xChange cloud marketplace to government customers. Under the terms of the agreement, NJVC customers will use xChange technology to shop for on-demand compute services from providers that are looking to sell unused capacity, often at a discount. This service will soon be available to the federal government through the new NJVC Cloudcuity™ Government Marketplace via the NJVC Cloudcuity Management Portal.

NJVC recently announced its Cloudcuity portfolio of services to support mission- and business-focused cloud computing environments, and is now expanding its capabilities through this alliance.

“Virtustream xChangewill give NJVC Cloudcuity users the automated ability to compare the cost of service offerings across the Cloudcuity Management Portal,” said Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, NJVC Cloudcuity. “Users will be able to take advantage of temporary price reductions through spot pricing and arbitrage. In addition, it will give the company the ability to dynamically adjust rates and apply a variety of pricing methodologies, such as fixed, variable, tiered and subscription, delivering on an important tenant of agile acquisition.”

Virtustream’s xChange allows enterprises in any vertical, including government, healthcare, education and financial services, to create a virtual cloud marketplace of approved vendors and consumers of cloud services. Each industry vertical has unique requirements and standards for the cloud, for example, healthcare (HIPAA), ecommerce (PCI), government (FISMA, G-cloud) and defense (DIACAP, NIST-800-53). As a result, it had been difficult to interconnect clouds within verticals to share capacity (cloud-bursting), applications (community clouds) or information (cloud federation).xChange now provides this secure and compliant capability.

Hosted on Cloudcuity, the government-focused xChange will also provide supplier scoring, billing, price comparisons and workload migration, while offering a dashboard on performance and service level agreement requirements. Employing a marketplace concept, xChange enables users to respond to dynamic pricing based on availability and demand.

“xChange is a trusted cloud marketplace that brings together approved vendors and consumers, and enables users to buy/sell capacity, access spot pricing and see future pricing,” said Kevin Reid, Virtustream chief executive and technology officer.“The majority of broker applications use a department store model—one shop with a handful of suppliers. xChange leverages dynamic market conditions to reduce the cost of infrastructure, while assuring enterprise cloud customers that they will stay competitive, compliant and secure.”

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About NJVC^®

With a focus on information technology automation, NJVC^® specializes in supporting highly secure, complex IT enterprises in business- and mission-critical environments, particularly for the intelligence and defense communities. We offer a wide breadth of IT and strategic solutions to our customers, ranging from strategic consulting to managed flexible services in five business areas: Cloud Services, Cyber Security, Data Center Services, IT Services and Print Solutions. Our global workforce includes dedicated and talented employees, with more than 90 percent holding security clearances. We partner with our customers to support their missions with security-cleared, dedicated and talented employees ready to deploy globally. To learn more, visit www.njvc.com.

About Virtustream

Virtustream is a leading cloud innovator offering enterprise class cloud solutions for enterprises, governments and service providers. Virtustream simplifies moving complex IT to the cloud—whether private, public or hybrid—while delivering the full economic and business benefits of the cloud. Virtustream offers x Stream: a secure, high availability, enterprise class hybrid cloud solution, delivering application level SLAs for mission critical applications (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and thousands more). xStream is available as software for existing data centers and as a managed service from Virtustream's cloud—all backed by professional services to design, migrate and manage clouds. Virtustream offers xStream worldwide; owns data centers in the United States and EMEA; operates an international Cloud Exchange; has offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Toronto and Dublin, and has partners in Asia and China.

Media Contacts:

Michelle Snyder Audra Capas

NJVC 5StarPR

703.839.7609 703.437.9301

michelle.snyder@njvc.com audra@5starpr.com

Lisa Desmond Heather Fitzsimmons

Virtustream, Inc. Mindshare PR

615.368.7325 650.800.7160

lisa.desmond@virtustream.com heather@mindsharepr.com

Cloudcuity™: Thought Leadership Translated to Operational Excellence

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:57:00 +0000

As my long time readers have certainly noticed, the frequency of my posts have lengthened over the past few months. First, I would like to offer my apologies for being remiss in that department but I have had some extenuating circumstances.

For over three years I have been closely observing and actively participating in the government's transition to cloud computing. Many of my observations, experiences and insights have been revealed through "Cloud Musings", "Cloud Musings on Forbes" and in my first book "GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government". In parallel, I have also been designing strategies, building processes and creating transition tools all designed to reduce the risk and increase the value of cloud transformation projects. The culmination of my personal efforts and those of the entire team here at NJVC have now all been folded into our new brand for cloud computing operational excellence - Cloudcuity™

Cloudcuity™ offers a new framework that is specifically structured to help deliver measurable operational and economic benefits for cloud technology implementations. This brand fold's NJVC's rich legacy of data center consolidation, application migration and operations support into a repeatable cloud deployment model. Our team's unsurpassed insight into critical considerations for cloud computing deployments of secure applications helps mitigate risk, while ensuring optimal fit to an agency's mission. Our service offerings are laser focused on the goal of providing solutions with exceptional fit to mission and clear, measurable operational and economic benefits, as defined by the customer.

In the coming weeks, as you learn more about Cloudcuity™ and it's capabilities, please feel free to reach out to me directly with your comments, suggestions, critiques or complaints. If you see a need with which we can possibly assist, also don't hesitate to call.

NJVC® Unveils Cloudcuity™ Umbrella Framework for NJVC Cloud Services

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:05:00 +0000

Vienna, Va., Sept. 13, 2012 — NJVC®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces Cloudcuity™, a new framework for the company’s cloud service offerings to help customers transition their technology applications to a cloud environment while cutting spending, improving process and billing efficiencies and complying with a myriad of regulatory and security requirements.

The first service being introduced under the framework is the Cloudcuity Management Portal—the first commercial, multi-cloud broker service specifically designed to support federal government customers.

“Cloudcuity is not your typical cloud service,’” said Jody Tedesco, NJVC president. “This family of NJVC cloud capabilities, beginning with the Cloudcuity Management Portal, is designed for technology decision makers who must deploy IT applications to the cloud with transparency for managing risk and governance under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). NJVC is partnering with an innovative company, Gravitant, to provide federal departments and agencies with on-demand, one-stop-shopping for vendor-neutral, secure cloud solutions that enable customers to test, configure, provision and manage cloud services from start to finish using a single online interface.”

The underlying technology behind the Cloudcuity Management Portal is a unified cloud lifecycle management platform, cloudMatrix™, created and powered by Gravitant. The platform allows users to try, design and price an array of services from multiple cloud providers before placing an order or spending any money. Users can compare key differences and features among cloud service providers, such as security, service level agreements (SLAs) and cost. By testing applications for suitability in the cloud, the typical costs and inefficiencies associated with migrating untested applications to the cloud are alleviated.

“The Cloudcuity Management Portal provides a secure environment for federal agencies to try out and test cloud programs before committing to a large-scale migration,” said Dr. Ilyas Iyoob, director of advanced analytics, Gravitant. “The portal is also the perfect, risk-free strategy for any department or agency to comply with the federal cloud implementation mandate without jeopardizing its mission.”

Once a user decides on one or more cloud services, the platform automatically orders the service(s). Users then manage their cloud services with command-and-control features built into the platform. They can also quickly and easily change providers without fear of vendor lock in.

In addition, the portal:

Applies advanced monitoring and analytic tools to ensure compliance with budgets and SLAs

Consolidates billing and SLA governance
Correlates usage and cost for complete IT organizational transparency
Offers a choice of a software-as-a-service subscription or a self-service model
Meets all National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Security Agency (NSA) common criteria standards for the evaluation of IT products for security and trustworthiness

The cloud providers currently offering their services through the Cloudcuity Management Portal are Amazon, GoGrid, Savvis and Terremark. Amazon GovCloud is expected to be available through the portal by mid-October. NJVC and Gravitant also are evaluating a number of other cloud providers for future integration in the portal.

The NJVC Cloudcuity Management Portal is based on the same technology—cloudMatrix—already applied successfully by the State of Texas in its multi-year cloud computing pilot project. Through the use of a self-service, virtual private cloud portal, four Texas agencies were able to provision, manage and support every phase of their cloud services from a marketplace of providers—choosing cloud solutions, provisioning services, managing operations and capacity and decommissioning. The Texas project is the only known successfully implemented model of a cloud brokerage in a government context.

To learn more about the features and benefits of NJVC’s Cloudcuity Management Portal, visit http://www.cloudcuity.com or call 703.665.9119.

###

About NJVC®

With a focus on information technology automation, NJVC® specializes in supporting highly secure, complex IT enterprises in mission-critical environments, particularly for the intelligence and defense communities. We offer a wide breadth of IT and strategic solutions to our customers, ranging from strategic consulting to managed flexible services in five business areas: Cloud Services, Cyber Security, Data Center Services, IT Services and Print Solutions. Our global workforce includes dedicated and talented employees, with 94 percent holding security clearances. We partner with our customers to support their missions with security-cleared, dedicated and talented employees ready to deploy globally. To learn more, visit www.njvc.com.

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com

Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com

NJVC® Announces SaaS Accelerate: Specialized Infrastructure Hosting and Managed Services Program for Software-as-a-Service Providers

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Jackson) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 14:58:00 +0000

VIENNA, Va., Aug. 15, 2012 —NJVC^® announces the release of NJVC SaaS Accelerate, a specialized infrastructure hosting and managed services offering designed to support the business needs of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers.

Launched as part of NJVC’s broader managed and cloud hosting infrastructure-as-a-service offerings, SaaS Accelerate simplifies infrastructure management decisions for customers, and offers a tiered array of marketing support services focused on driving software utilization and customer success. “Cloud-based applications from SaaS suppliers are revolutionizing the software industry,” said Jody Tedesco, NJVC president. “NJVC SaaS Accelerate is designed to support these innovative enterprises with an array of customizable infrastructure support and business development services that can reduce the burden of maintaining a robust and secure infrastructure, while simultaneously helping companies access valuable business development support to help them grow.”

The infrastructure management components of SaaS Accelerate focus on the deployment of highly secure hardware, software and networking infrastructure for application hosting. NJVC deploys infrastructure stacks to support all major operating environments, and supports critical database services with cost-effective solutions. The NJVC infrastructure also meets or exceeds the specifications of critical regulations governing secure hosting services for private and public markets, including, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE-16), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) high and moderate, and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

NJVC SaaS Accelerate also delivers a tiered package of marketing services designed to support business development, tied to mutually defined revenue targets and built into the hosting services fee structure. These services include public relations, joint marketing collateral, online marketing and other support programs. Customers selecting to enroll in SaaS Accelerate work with their NJVC advisors to define the package of services best suited to meet their infrastructure and business development needs.

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About NJVC^_®

With a focus on information technology automation, NJVC^® specializes in supporting highly secure, complex IT enterprises in business-critical environments. We offer a wide breadth of IT solutions to our customers, ranging from strategic consulting to flexible managed services in five business areas: Cloud Services, Cyber Security, Data Center Services, IT Services and Print Solutions. Our global workforce includes dedicated and talented employees, with 94 percent holding security clearances, located at more than 160 customer sites. We partner with our customers to support their missions. To learn more, visit www.njvc.com.

Contact

Michelle Snyder, NJVC, 703.893.7609, michelle.snyder@njvc.com
Audra Capas, 5StarPR, 703.437.9301, audra@5starpr.com