Cloud and the next American century.

July 27, 2011 Off By David
Grazed from BusinessCloud9.  Author: Stuart Lauchlan.

With the UK government yet to produce its own Cloud Computing national strategy, the Americans have been setting yet another example to follow with the publication of new guidelines on the potential of Cloud and how to procure services.

The Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in US Deployment of the Cloud (or Cloud2), a foundation composed of figures from the Cloud market including Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and VCE CEO Michael Capellas, has presented the federal government with a Cloud Computing roadmap.

Given the pedigree of the leading voices on the Commission, it will of course come as no surprise that the main conclusion is that the US needs to adopt Cloud Computing quickly in order to drive job creation and secure a leadership position in the field.

The commission was created by the TechAmerica Foundation on the behest of outgoing Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra, the man charged by President Barack Obama with driving through a sea-change in government ICT practices through a combination of data centre consolidation and an enforced ‘Cloud first’ policy for procurement.

Capellas said:  

“Today’s recommendations by the commission will help further accelerate adoption of Cloud Computing within the government infrastructure. Faster adoption of Cloud Computing will strengthen the United States’ leadership position in the global marketplace and ignite creation of jobs that will be in high demand over the next decade. ”
 

The Commission produced 14 recommendations that focus on four broad areas: trust, transactional data flows, transparency, transformation.

  • Trust: Individuals and organisations must be confident that the Cloud can meet their needs including security, privacy and availability.
  • Transnational Data Flows addresses the issue that the Cloud is not defined by national borders and calls for the US to lead by example and be willing to trust the Cloud for "appropriate workloads" in other countries – in other words, forget the notion of having to have data centres in country, a policy that would clearly benefit US providers with an eye to making inroads into the European public sector.
  • Transparency means that users need to have meaningful ways to evaluate Cloud implementation while providers need to enable document and tool portability across different Cloud environments.
  • Transformation covers the way that government acquires technology, investment in improving technology infrastructure. focusing on education and training priorities to breed a Cloud workforce; and creating incentives to encourage the global development and adoption of Cloud technologies.

As well as ‘Cloud first’, there is an undeniable ‘America first’ ethos running through the conclusions and recommendations. The report argues:  

“For more than 50 years, the United States has taken advantage of new developments in Information Technology (IT). US companies and government agencies were early adopters of the mainframe computer, the minicomputer, the personal computer, and the World Wide Web. We are now entering a new phase in the history of computing that will be at least as transformative as the mainframe or the Web and provide at least as much benefit to all Americans. ”
 

Even more explicit is the declaration from Phil Bond, president and CEO of TechAmerica and member of the TechAmerica Foundation board when he states:  

“Cloud Computing is the latest example of how American innovation sets the pace for the world. This report examines the steps that the US government must take as a buyer and as a policymaker to ensure that we keep setting the pace. An increasingly competitive world is right on our heels looking for an opportunity to pass the US in this new deployment. I’m betting on America. ”
 

The Commission seems to advocate an arms length approach to regulation in the Cloud and to not creating barriers for expansion, arguing: 

“ In some cases, the U.S. government may choose NOT to take action and allow market forces to guide the evolution of the digital economy. US national policies that conflict with those of other countries, even if designed to achieve worthy goals like security or consumer protection, could end up constraining how the Cloud develops or discouraging investment in new Cloud services and applications. ”
 

Perhaps the most interesting recommendation from a non-US perspective is the plea to slacken up on national border regulations for data hosting and transfer. At the moment US Cloud firms face challenges in pitching into, for example, the UK public sector unless they have a data centre within UK borders in which sensitive data can be stored. Clearly this adds a significant cost burden on US firms which want to carve a slice of the forthcoming public sector action in the UK – or anywhere in Europe. So it’s no surprise that the Commission:

“encourages adoption of approaches that give Cloud providers the flexibility to develop and deploy services for a diversity of workloads in innovative ways, rather than constrain Cloud services by geography. This will allow users, when appropriate, to take advantage of the potential benefits in access, reliability, resiliency, efficiency, and costs that can result from geographical distribution of workload. ”
 

It adds:  

“While the Commission is not declaring that no circumstances exist in which certain types of Federal data could be limited to U.S. storage, it is critical to understand that location is but one factor in the security of information, and location should not be viewed as a proxy for security in the cloud. For example, effective use of security technologies, including technologies to make data unreadable and unusable, is as important, if not more important than location in enhancing the security of data in the Cloud. Cloud providers typically locate data centres based on a variety of factors, including technical issues like network topology, economic issues like the price of electricity, and business issues like proximity to markets. Once data centres have been built, however, the storage and processing of data can occur in multiple data centres and across geographic boundaries and legal jurisdictions. ”
 

At the end of the day, the Commission’s main point is the need for action now. Given the impetus that has been put behind Cloud in the US government sector thanks to the sterling work of Kundra (with the enthusiastic backing of President Obama) it’s difficult from a UK perspective to appreciate that there’s a perceived need for more urgency.

With the Cabinet Office Cloud strategy not due for publication until the autumn, the UK is already considerably behind in articulating whatever it is that the G-Cloud is morphing into and delivery of that will inevitably take a number of years. While there are good examples of local level and some central government Cloud activity in the UK, it’s clear that the US government has set the pace here. The Commission concludes:   

“Reflecting the urgency to provide incremental movement, create momentum and lead through actions, many of the recommendations target short-term tactical and operational advances. Complementing these are longer term recommendations that reflect the strategic importance of the evolution, and the mandate to look beyond the Cloud we know today, to the opportunities it creates for the future…these recommendations should demonstrate that Cloud Computing is not a new technology that needs further validation or analysis before it can be safely adopted; it is a natural evolution in computing. Those who recognise this and take early advantage of the benefits it offers will, in the coming decades, be the leaders not in only IT but in driving the Cloud’s evolution, and therefore, in driving business and mission results. ”
 
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