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Government Clouds
Governments from around the world are starting to take notice of the flexibility, operational benefits and substantial cost savings that cloud computing can provide. This section highlights some of the government programs that are utilizing Cloud Computing.
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Cloud computing plays a key role in the President's initiative to modernize Information Technology (IT) by identifying enterprise-wide common services and solutions and adopting a new cloud computing business model. The Federal CIO Council under the guidance of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO), Vivek Kundra, established the Cloud Computing Initiative to fulfill the President's objectives for cloud computing.
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The DISA is developing a number of Cloud Computing solutions available to US military, DoD government civilians and DoD contractors for Government authorized use. They include: Forge.mil, a system that currently enables the collaborative development and use of open source and DoD community source software; GCDS, a commercially owned, globally distributed computing platform that provides a reliable and secure content and application distribution services solution that delivers applications to dispersed user communities; and RACE, a quick-turn computing solution that uses cloud computing to deliver platforms that are quick, inexpensive and secure.
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The Magellan program is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the US Department of Energy (DOE) and will examine cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient computing paradigm for scientists to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines. To test cloud computing for scientific capability, DOE centers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) in Illinois and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in California will install similar mid-range computing hardware, but will offer different computing environments. The combined set of systems will create a cloud testbed that scientists can use for their computations while also testing the effectiveness of cloud computing for their particular research problems.
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The GSA is focusing on implementing projects for planning, acquiring, deploying and utilizing cloud computing solutions for the Federal Government that increase operational efficiencies, optimize common services and solutions across organizational boundaries and enable transparent, collaborative and participatory government. This includes Apps.gov, the official Cloud Computing Storefront for the Federal Government. The site features a complete listing of all GSA approved Cloud services available to federal agencies.
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The Department of the Interior's National Business Center (NBC) plans to bring the benefits of cloud computing to both NBC's business services clients and data center hosting clients alike through advancements to the highly efficient NBC shared infrastructure. The NBC is offering six cloud computing products: NBCGrid (IaaS), NBCFiles (Cloud Storage), NBCStage (PaaS), NBC Hybrid Cloud, NBCApps (SaaS Marketplace), & NBCAuth.
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Nebula is a Cloud Computing pilot under development at NASA Ames Research Center. It integrates a set of open-source components into a seamless, self-service platform, providing high-capacity computing, storage and network connectivity using a virtualized, scalable approach to achieve cost and energy efficiencies.
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NIST's role in cloud computing is to promote the effective and secure use of the technology within government and industry by providing technical guidance and promoting standards.
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The UK Government’s CIO announced the establishment of a UK onshore, private Government Cloud Computing Infrastructure called G-Cloud. In essence the program will include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Middleware/Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In relation to SaaS the government would establish a Government Application Store. This plan is supported by the UK Government’s Digital Britain initiative.
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The Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) bundles all research-related EU initiatives together under a common roof, playing a crucial role in reaching the goals of growth, competitiveness and employment. The FP7 is funding several projects on cloud computing and has also compiled a group of experts to outline the future direction of Cloud Computing research.
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The Canadian Government's CTO of Public Works Government Services presented a paper on Cloud Computing and the Canadian Environment. This paper essentially outlines the Canadian Government’s considerations of cloud computing by outlining the advantage of their cold landscape (among other things) as a prime location for the construction of large energy efficient Cloud Computing data centers.
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Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) released a report outlining the Digital Japan Creation Project (ICT Hatoyama Plan) which seeks to create new Information and Communications Technology (ICT) markets to help boost Japan’s economy. Within this plan is an outline to create a nation wide Cloud Computing infrastructure tentatively called the Kasumigaseki Cloud.
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Directories