Symantec plans to release a full refresh of its Storage Foundation and Veritas Operations Manager software, which will include features allowing end-to-end management of private cloud infrastructures. Veritas Operations Manager (VOM) 4.0 is due out in May 2012. Storage Foundation 6.0 is planned for release in the second half of the year. One upcoming feature Symantec is planning is called Enterprise Object Store, which will use a global name space to offer a heterogeneous, enterprise-wide abstraction of all file data. According to Don Angspatt, vice president of product management for Symantec's storage and availability management group, the file system will be able to scale to petabytes in size and will be accessible through HTTP. "So this creates one common global repository. You can access data the same way you would [from a workstation] through your cell phone," he said.

A recent New York Times article spells out the issues around federal cloud computing adoption explaining “such high praise for new Internet technologies may be common in Silicon Valley, but it is rare in the federal government, where concerns about security are paramount”. Agencies are notably concerned about losing responsibility for managing and securing data as well as the possibility of cloud outages. However, there are agencies with fewer concerns about security breaches and they have been busy moving user accounts and email services to the cloud environment. For example, the Agriculture Department has already moved about 46,000 employee accounts and is in the process of adding another 120,000. NASA has also made the migration by launching their own internal Nebula cloud computing platform. This platform provides a range of services powerful enough to manage all of NASA’s large-scale scientific data sets.

It is already the second half of August and we are quickly approaching a busy conference time for DLT. Up-coming events will take DLT all over the country, but some of the best are local ones happening just down the road. The annual Innovation Nation Forum, hosted by MeriTalk, will take place Tuesday, August 23 at the Washington Convention Center. Aiming to “Shake IT Up,” Innovation Nation will focus on three Federal IT hot topics- cloud computing, cybersecurity and data center consolidation.

DLT’s Chief Cloud Technologist David Blankenhorn touches on all of the basics in this Securing the Cloud webcast - the concerns, the cautions, the considerations, but he also discusses how trust and an understanding of responsibilities play into the mix. Check out this clip for an overview of what responsibilities fall on the agency versus the provider.

“If you are waiting until the market settles before making decisions, you are going to be waiting a long, long time.” (According to DLT’s CTO Van Ristau, in a recent Platform-as-a-Service webcast) Gartner, a third party analyst of the IT market, published a statement that by the end of 2011, the battle for leadership in Platform-as-a-Service and key PaaS segments will engulf the software industry. This particular segment of the cloud computing is moving very fast and there is a lot of competition- always a healthy thing for end users. Cloud providers are constantly delivering new or expanded PaaS offerings, and the market doesn’t seem to be settling anytime soon. If you are considering adopting a PaaS strategy, it is time to investigate the different offerings available, get your development teams involved, and begin using these services. Of course, by the time all of that happens in your agency, solutions offerings may have changed again! But, it’s better to figure out what you want, what you need and what’s out there in the market.

“Private cloud adoption is a journey both from a technical and business perspective.” At the recent AFCEA Cloud Lifecycle Management Symposium in DC, the discussion on government cloud computing ranged from acquisition policies to building the roadmaps in which NIST and government guidelines are being centered around. The vision of these roadmaps is to “easily locate desired IT services, rapidly procure access to the services, and use the services to deliver innovative mission solutions.” But with all of the service providers and offerings available, how can government standardize and corral all of these into one simple menu of options that meets individual agency requirements? How will agencies define a successful cloud program? What are the strategies to assure success?

DLT recently participated in DLT recently participated in the XChange Public Sector conference that which brought together leading analysts to focus on opportunities in the public sector community, including new products, services and solutions, as well as insight from leading industry speakers. The opening session, presented by speaker William Eggers, focused on the impact of changing federal and state IT initiatives on public sector integrators and vendors. These vendors have been challenged to develop programs to meet the evolving needs of the government customers. Eggers discussed his research findings on why some big government initiatives succeed while others fail, and drove home the key point that successful programs have elements that can be replicated. These elements act as a type of map to “systemic barriers to success” that are built into challenging programs. One program mandate that can’t be avoided is the migration to cloud computing. The federal government has a major interest in making that switch, even though the adoption process is slow-going. DLT’s CTO Van Ristau participated in a panel discussion about this during the Federal Cloud Session: Drilling Down into the Federal Market. The discussion aimed to provide insight into cloud computing initiatives that emphasize a push to reduce infrastructure costs, speed application development, reduce complexity, and shrink the energy and real estate footprint of federal IT activities.

To have a public cloud or not to have a public cloud- that is the question. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) comes with many choices for the customer, and deciding whether or not to make virtualized data centers public or private, is one of the largest ones faced by government agencies. In this clip from the Cloud Advisory Group’s webcast on IaaS, CTO Van Ristau provides some insight into determining your IaaS needs.

Rapid elasticity, measured service, multi-tenant applications…if these features make visions of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) dance in your head, then you are in the right place. And if it just brings confusion, have no fear-you too are in the right place! During the second installment of the Fundamentals of Cloud Computing webcast series, the DLT Cloud Advisory Group talked “SaaS” and lots of it. Beginning with an overview of the basics, CTO Van Ristau delves into a complete evaluation of different solutions available with this deployment model. But what really is the difference between SaaS and PaaS and IaaS you ask? Watch this exclusive video of Van explaining just that.

With the Fundamentals of Cloud Computing webcast series completed, each week we will highlight pieces of useful information discussed during the sessions, hosted by the Cloud Advisory Group. The series started with Introduction to Cloud Computing, offering an overview of the history and basics of the cloud. With an in-depth look at the role of virtualization, the different service and deployment models and vendor choices, CTO Van Ristau provides key some key knowledge necessary to prepare for migration to the cloud. But no preparation would be complete without an understanding of the challenges associated with relocating to a cloud environment. Check out this clip from the webcast to hear Van’s take on some of key issues to consider when taking the cloud computing plunge.