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Commercial vs Federal Cloud Computing

What's the difference between the commercial cloud computing market and the Federal cloud computing market?
By Kevin Jackson
Article Rating:
May 2, 2009 06:15 PM EDT
Reads:
 7,553

Cloud Musings

Kevin L. Jackson's Blog

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 shopping, banking, selling, collaborating, communicating and being entertained. In reality, these things represent an on-line delivery and consumption model for business and consumer services. These users are not explicitly buying “cloud computing,” but the “cloud services” that are enabled by cloud computing environments. Cloud computing is actually the emerging IT development, deployment and delivery model that enables real-time delivery of products, services and solutions over the Internet.


Federal government customers do use the Internet, but the vast majority of their business is done using private internets. In the DoD, for instance, we call these private networks NIPRnet, SIPRnet and JWICS. These customers are, however, very interested in learning about how emerging cloud computing models can be used within and between all of these networks.

The epiphany here is that, for the most part, the commercial cloud computing market is about making money providing cloud services while the Federal marketplace is about making money helping Federal customers design and build cloud computing infrastructures.

I may be oversimplifying this, but I welcome your thoughts.

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ)

Published May 2, 2009 – Reads 7,553
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Kevin L. Jackson is a senior information technologist specializing in information technology solutions that meet critical Federal government operational requirements. Currently, he serves as Vice President at Dataline, LLC , and editor of Government Cloud Computing e-zine. Kevin blogs regularly at Cloud Musings. To learn more about the US Federal Cloud Computing Initiative and the business value it offers, please visit the Government Cloud Value Survey.

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