Kevin Jackson

Refusing to accept the 30 percent unemployment rate for California veterans between the ages of 18 and 24, Veterans 360 (V360) offers recently-separated combat veterans the opportunity for a solid and productive future. Using a four-pronged approach which encompasses engagement, education, employment, and healing, V360 prepares and equips veterans with the interpersonal and professional skills they will need for a successful transition back into civilian life. At a rate of 22 suicides a day, veterans are in tremendous need of a support system to deal with the overwhelming transition from military combat life to civilian life. Thousands of veterans endure unemployment, underemployment, homelessness, and despondency because they lack combat trauma coping skills. Through V360, young veterans progress towards the goal of meaningful employment by receiving training in ci... (more)

Publishing Synergy: Blog, Twitter and Ulitzer

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 promis... (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)