Kevin Jackson

Government Cloud on Ulitzer Have you ever been given the task of building and executing an aggressive customer outreach program? Well I received my assignment about a year ago and trust me; the budget was not commensurate with the assigned goal. My particular need was to educate prospective Federal government customers on a new information technology trend. Known as cloud computing, this new approach blends service oriented architecture (SOA), virtualization technologies and a "pay-by-the-use" sales approach into a new IT delivery business model. Although this new approach promised the delivery of better constituent service at a reduced cost, risk adverse Federal agency decision makers needed to know much more before they would even consider cloud computing as an option. During a time of economic collapse and fiscal crisis, competing security, governance and procur... (more)

Commercial vs Federal Cloud Computing

Government Cloud Computing on Ulitzer Frank Gens of IDC recently provided an excellent overview of the the new "Cloud Computing Era". His description of "cloud computing" and "cloud services" really highlights the difference between the commercial cloud computing market and the Federal cloud computing market. (Paraphrased from Frank Gens' article) When people talk about “cloud computing”, they are usually referring to things like software-as-a-service (SaaS) and storage or server capacity as a service. They may also talk about the many “non-IT” business and consumer services like s... (more)

Cloud Computing Debate: Booz Allen Hamilton Comments on Recent McKinsey & Co. Report

(In a recent discussion document titled "Clearing the air on cloud computing", Will Forrest of McKinsey & Co. offered his view on cloud computing. Unedited comments on the report from Mike Cameron and Rod Fontecilla, Booz Allen Hamilton Principals are provided below, published at their request.) The recent McKinsey report on cloud computing “Clearing the air on cloud computing” has caused a bit of a stir, primarily since it purports to demonstrate that cloud computing can be twice as expensive as traditional data centers in some applications. Since this report makes a claim to ... (more)

An Interview with Federal CIO Nominee Vivek Kundra

(The following interview was conducted by Mr. Bob Gourley and was originaly posted on CTOvision.com on February 3,2009. I thank him for providing his permission to repost this timely article on Government Cloud Computing.) Every CTO I know has heard of Vivek Kundra, former CTO of the District of Columbia.  We have all been following his accomplishments in transforming the technology program in DC and have watched in excitement as more and more capabilities have been rolled out to serve the city and its citizens. We have followed reports of bold moves he put in place to ensure tech... (more)

CIA's Jill Tummler Singer Newest Ulitzer Author

Jill Tummler Singer, Deputy Chief Information Officer at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is now a Ulitzer author. Appointed in November 2006, Ms Singer is responsible for ensuring CIA has the information, technology, and infrastructure necessary to effectively execute its missions. Prior to her appointment as Deputy CIO, she served as the Director of the Diplomatic Telecommunications Service (DTS), United States Department of State, and was responsible for global network services to US foreign missions. Speaking at the recent GovIT Expo in Washington DC, Ms Singer highlig... (more)