5 ways to benefit from NIST's cloud road map now

Most government research managers face the common problem of how to keep up with policy flow, the steady and at times torrential stream of IT directives, guidance and requirements from oversight agencies on how to modernize agency systems.

But in area of cloud computing, for the moment, help is on the way. On Nov. 2, the National Institute of Standards and Innovation released a "cloud computing innovation road map," a set of steps to setting up cloud systems that its creators said would help clear their path to cloud adoption.

The draft document

The draft document, "U.S. Government Cloud Computing Innovation Roadmap, Release 1.0" defines high-priority requirements for standards, official guidance and research developments that need to be met for agencies to accelerate their migration to the cloud model.

"The Tech Roadmap aggregates the ocean of information out there regarding the cloud," said Fred Whiteside, manager of the Commerce Department's critical infrastructure protection program. The plan "takes the finger of the federal manager and places it on the things he needs to know to move forward with cloud adoption," said Whiteside, who is as well chairman of the NIST Cloud Computing Security Working Group.

Deployed correctly, cloud computing has the potential to greatly reduce waste, increase data center efficiency and usage rates, and lower operating costs, federal officials said. It should also in the long run cut down the policy thicket.

Dawn Leaf, NIST's senior executive for cloud computing, said the road map provides both strategic and tactical guidance to agencies. Focusing on nearly-term guidance, she listed five steps agency managers can take right now to benefit from the road map.

As they make procurement decisions and pick cloud services, agency managers should ask their prospective cloud providers to map their cloud services to the NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture. The reference architecture can be used to compare the different cloud offerings and help agencies to better understand the types of services the vendors offer, Leaf said.

With declining defense budgets, the U.S. military must embrace C4ISR solutions that are both flexible and cost effective. In this webcast, learn how C4ISR systems can reduce costs by leveraging COTS research and commercial standards, as so then as achieve greater flexibility of applications and faster delivery of capability to the warfighter. Read more