When discussing the cloud paradigm on any level it's important to understand just what kind of cloud you're talking about. Sorting through them, we can consider three computing cloud models and a single storage cloud model:

1. A public cloud is a cloud infrastructure that is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services. (NIST) 
2. A private cloud is an infrastructure operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. (NIST) 
3. The hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application.  (NIST)
4. The storage cloud is simply the delivery of virtualized storage on demand. (SNIA)

Computing and storage clouds are still relatively new technologies.  As they develop and continue to become more widespread, federal agencies are evaluating the benefits and prioritizing the components, applications and data of their portfolio best suited for each.  Today, lower risk informational web applications and non-critical data are the primary targets of most agencies to migrate to cloud environments in order to meet the CIO 25-Point IT Management Reform Program Shift to “Cloud First” policy.  Each agency is required to identify three “must move” services.  They must move one of those services to the cloud within 12 months and the remaining two within 18 months.  The major decision factors influencing cloud adoption by agency CIOs are risk, cost savings, increased IT flexibility and maturity of public and private cloud services, security, privacy and support.  

The public cloud delivers a select set of standardized business processes, applications and/or infrastructure services on a flexible price per use basis. Its strengths include improved standardization, zero footprint on premises, enhanced flexibility, and very rapid service deployment.  The perceived weaknesses of a public cloud by most CIOs are security, privacy and support issues.  

The private cloud’s strengths (vs. the public cloud) include improved customization, efficiency, security, privacy, and centralized control.  However, cost optimization is limited to the agency’s ability to fully leverage the private cloud services at a high utilization level.  

The hybrid cloud helps optimize critical applications and data use within the private cloud portion while moving peak-loads and less critical operations to the public cloud. For example, such an approach could facilitate Federal emergency services by allowing rapid public cloud service expansion during an event like the  Haitian earthquake. 

The storage cloud provides self-service acquisition and use of storage on demand.  Such a facility could serve an agency’s dynamic storage requirements as long as FISMA requirements were addressed.  

I think that the Federal Government can use private, public, hybrid or storage clouds effectively for subsets of their portfolio for both applications and data, realizing their associated benefits, by considering (1) existing data center investments vs. planned growth and (2) security/privacy/support requirements.  At a minimum, agencies should be able to realize a 25% reduction in their operational budget of the application and data transitioned to cloud environments.  

Johnny Barnes, left, is the General Manager Technology and CTO for IBM's Global Business Services. Mr. Barnes has over 35 years of experience with IBM, holding a variety of product, solution development, staff, system architecture, management and executive positions.  Mr. Barnes has been appointed to several IBM corporate staff positions, which have included a number of critical IBM product and strategy task forces responsible for establishing the future technical and business direction for IBM. Mr. Barnes has also worked to re-engineer IBM’s internal hardware development, global computing and telephony environments and grow IBM’s Public Sector transformation services business. 

Mr. Barnes has an overall perspective of the computer industry and its applicability to business segments, as well as IBM's strategic plans to meet the distributed computing and e-business on demand market to satisfy future critical business requirements.  Currently, as General Manager Technology and Corporate Technology Officer, Mr. Barnes has responsibility for IBM’s WW Public Sector Technical and Solution Strategy and expanding IBM’s Public Sector transformation service business.

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