Just in time for the new Federal Cloud Computing Storefront, Sevatec, Inc. is announcing the development of a toolkit to help federal agencies transform their enterprise architectures to cloud computing more effectively and seamlessly. With last week's General Services Administration (GSA) Request For Quotation (RFQ) release for the US Federal Cloud Computing Initiative, Sevatec may be positioning itself well. As part of the GSA Federal Supply Service Schedule 70, the RFQ process will grant agencies direct access to pre-authorized, commercial experts capable of delivering cloud computing products and services.

Cloud computing is a general term for delivering hosted services over the Internet with massive elasticity and scalability. Different from traditional hosting, cloud computing provides easy, scalable access to computing resources, storage, and other IT services. Cloud computing is on demand, elastic, and fully managed by the provider, allowing agencies to shop a multi-layered cloud for as much or as little of a service, infrastructure, or business process as they want at any given time at dramatically lower cost.

Dr. Rod Fontecilla, PhD., a former Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, is well known for his work in cloud computing strategies such as a cloud transition methodology, cloud economics analysis, massive data analytics, and many other related topics. Dr. Fontecilla recently joined the ranks of this 8(a) certified, CMMI Level 3-rated management and technology consulting services firm as their CTO. The company is also one of Washington Technology’s 2008 Fast 50, a list of the fastest growing small businesses in the nation. Dr. Fontecilla is leading the work on this cloud diagnostic toolkit (CDT) and sees it as a game changer in helping federal agencies more effectively and seamlessly transform their enterprise architectures to cloud computing.

Although significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, improved access to high-speed Internet, and a weak economy, have accelerated federal agency interest in cloud computing, Dr. Fontecilla recommends that agencies analyze carefully how best to migrate some of their existing applications, residing within their data centers, to a cloud provider using this new diagnostic toolkit. This toolkit will empower CIOs with the right set of tools to categorize and prioritize best cloud candidates, identify potential break points in the overarching architecture, identify training and staffing changes, and assist in defining the roadmap for the future enterprise architecture using cloud components.

At many federal government agencies, most existing applications are tightly linked to other applications. These enterprise applications exchange data directly among themselves or via web services and are linked to external sources that exchange information using different messaging mechanisms and key infrastructure components, such as an LDAP, that provide authentication and authorization schema. While these infrastructure components, in most instances, perform well in enterprise architectures within agency’s data centers, a determination must still be made on whether they will work seamlessly between an agency's data center and cloud providers, or be certified and accredited by current standards, before making the leap to cloud computing. CIOs will encounter significant risks deciding to use cloud computing without the ability to thoroughly analyze the existing as-is and to-be environments or fully understanding all the elements of the transformation needed to achieve a cloud enabled architecture.

When applied to an agency's enterprise architecture, Sevatec’s cloud diagnostic toolkit provides CIOs a clear roadmap to transforming a significant portion of their enterprise architecture to cloud computing effectively and realize immediate savings in computing resources, storage, and other IT services — which, for many CIOs, offers a compelling business case for analysis before making the leap to cloud computing.

To learn more about Sevatec's cloud diagnostic toolkit, contact Dr. Fontecilla directly at rfontecilla@sevatec.com.

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