Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Global Interoperability Consortium's Cloud Computing Project Detailed at NATO Conference

PRESS RELEASE
April 30, 2013, 2:30 p.m. ET

Eric Vollmecke of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium reports 
the proliferation of geospatial information will pose problems for disaster 
responders and describes a project designed to move critical data more 
efficiently using an open cloud-based infrastructure 
 
 
WASHINGTON, April 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Managing and disseminating the rapidly increasing amount of geospatial data will be a huge challenge for governments and civilians responding to the world's next big disaster, Eric Vollmecke of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) told 350 global leaders at the NATO Network Enabled Capability conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, April 23-25.

"From an operational perspective, there is an insatiable appetite for overhead imagery to build situational awareness. Currently, platforms keep growing to collect and disseminate the necessary information. This information is not timely in its response, it's unwieldy in its deployment and it lacks the flexibility to enable cross-domain interoperability," said Vollmecke. "Unless we get our arms around all of this, the amount of data will be overwhelming and we will miss precious days trying to get the right information to the right international stakeholders so they can do their work and not sit waiting on the sidelines."

Vollmecke said the use of a cloud computing environment will improve the ability to quickly share critical information between nations and non-governmental organizations. He described the Cloud Concept and Demonstration project that NCOIC is working on for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The NGA project is a collaborative effort by NCOIC and its member-companies to show the interoperability and movement of data in an open cloud-based infrastructure. NGA is providing unclassified data that supports a scenario depicting the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The project builds on a series of successful lab interoperability demonstrations based on Haiti that NCOIC conducted in 2010.

"In Haiti, we collected a huge amount of data compared to the Tasmanian tsunami of 2004. Tomorrow the amount of data could be 100 fold and one organization alone will not be able to manage the inputs," said Vollmecke, who is also a major general in the U.S. Air National Guard and, while on active duty, commanded two airlift wings during the 2010 Haitian crisis. "With the NGA community cloud project, NCOIC is testing a collaborative, real-time environment that has both suppliers and consumers of data at different security levels."

Information technology solutions provider NJVC is serving as team leader of the NGA project and participants include Boeing, The Aerospace Corporation and Open Geospatial Consortium. "NCOIC has assembled a team you would not normally see on a government-led project," Vollmecke told the NATO audience. "Using a consortium is the most rapid and effective way to facilitate the advancement and deployment of technology. The parties can set aside their traditional roles and aren't subject to the contractual and legal walls that typically are put up between government and contractors. The exchange of information and ideas is more free-flowing."

Vollmecke, who is NCOIC program director, reported that Cycle One of the NGA project is complete and the cloud infrastructure has been defined and built, with the team establishing standards and processes, utilizing best practices, and addressing potential problems such as ownership, bandwidth, latency, availability, access and security.

In Cycle Two, set to begin in May, NCOIC member-companies will test out the infrastructure. They will function as "actors" -- information consumers and providers like police, firefighters, rescue workers, medical personnel, etc. -- who plug into the clouds and use the geospatial data to activate unique, sometimes proprietary, applications that demonstrate end-user capabilities.

"The key is to have a core or resident capability in the cloud that can be rapidly expanded on demand, when there is an event or disaster," said Vollmecke. "This will free up intelligence analysts to work their problems, while putting geospatial information into the hands of other users. Cloud technology can improve everyone's capability and effectiveness, while reducing cost, time and risk."


About NCOIC

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium's core capability is enabling cross-domain interoperability among and between such areas as aerospace, civil and military operations, air traffic management, health care and more. NCOIC is a global not-for-profit organization with more than 60 members representing 12 countries. It has an eight-year history of developing net-centric skills and tools that help its members and customers to operate effectively across diverse global market sectors and domains. For more information, visit www.ncoic.org

SOURCE Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium
/Web site: www.ncoic.org


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Thursday, April 25, 2013

IBM Debate Series - What’s Next in IT?


Next week I will be participating in the inaugural session of What’s Next in IT Debate Series, a  new program of authentic debates and conversations on key technology topics. Sponsored by IBM, The Debate Series is an ongoing series of social video debates, held on Spreecast.com (a browser based social video site much like Google hangouts). The first What’s Next in IT debate will be a stimulating discussion on just when and why infrastructure really matters when it comes to building and managing clouds. 

My good friend David Linthicum will be moderating this first verbal battle. Leading technology publications frequently name David among the top 10 enterprise technologists in the world. He is a true thought leader in the industry, and an expert in complex distributed systems, including cloud computing, data integration, service oriented architecture (SOA), and big data systems. As the author of over 13 books on computing with over 3,000 published articles, as well as radio and TV appearances as a computing expert, he is often quoted in major business and technology publications. In addition, David is a frequent keynote presenter at industry conferences, with over 500 presentations given in the last 20 years. Along with me, the other panelist are:


Frank Degilio - Enterprise architect with an understanding of end to end infrastructure. Provides architectures for businesses worldwide that can tie mainframes, distributed systems and specialty appliances in a cohesive end to end solution. Can apply latest technologies to current business problems to increase IT efficiency. ·          

Frank Scavo - President of Computer Economics. With over 30 years of experience, he has led or participated in business strategy, IT strategy, and business improvement projects for organizations in a broad range of industries, including medical devices, pharmaceuticals, foods, consumer products, wholesale and retail distribution, high tech electronics, and information services.


To attend, just go to http://ibm.co/17sZlL8 to register, then click the link in the email you will receive on April 29 to attend at 1pm EDT on April 30.

Join us April 30 at 1pm EDT, 10am PDT.  Register now at ibm.co/17sZlL8
 
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Sunday, April 21, 2013

Lisbon Bound: NATO Network Enabled Capability Conference 2013


This week I will have the honor of attending the 2013 NNEC Conference  at the Corinthia Hotel in Lisbon, Portugal. The NNEC conference is an annual event which has been sponsored by HQ Supreme Allied Command Transformation (HQ SACT) since 2004. The conference is a major driver to promote NNEC within NATO, the nations, industry and other stakeholders in the civilian and military environment. This annual conference draws international attention as seen during the 2012 event held in Vienna, Austria with registration from more than 35 countries and 415 attendees. During this year’s event Major General Eric Vollmecke from the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will be presenting information on its Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) Demonstration.

Highlighted in a recent Government Computer News article, the project supports a concept proposed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to demonstrate the interoperability and movement of data in an open-cloud-based demonstration. NGA will provide unclassified data that supports a scenario depicting the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. NCOIC’s foundational model is based on a series of successful lab interoperability demonstrations, also based on Haiti, it conducted four times during 2010. For this effort,  NJVC is providing secure cloud brokerage services to the NCOIC using its first-to-market Cloudcuity Management Portal. NJVC’s partners are Cloudcuity Management PortalThe Boeing Company and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

Hosted through the secure Cloudcuity Management Portal, NCOIC members will have access to CloudScope, an automated set of evaluation tools that:
  • Determines cloud infrastructure feasibility
  • Estimates cloud infrastructure cost and benefits
  • Conducts physical capacity for cloud  translations
  • Matches application requirements to cloud provider capabilities based on features and functionality
  • compares provider costs and quality of service
Be on the lookout for more conference news next week!


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Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Demystifying PaaS for Federal Government



Join us on April 16, 2013 at 1 PM EDT to remove the mystery surrounding Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for Federal Government


The PaaS market is plagued with confusion, and agencies are slow to adopt technologies that they do not fully understand. With the high costs of software development, the Government stands to save billions of dollars by adopting PaaS and other cloud technologies. The Federal CIO’s office suggests that Shared Platforms will improve efficiencies by building once and using many times – but what does that mean to Federal buyers?

This FREE event will help Federal Government better understand PaaS to make better decisions and facilitate adoption. Please join distinguished panelists (from NIST, GSA, NASA, Cisco, NJVC and Dell) as we attempt to demystify the topic of Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Government.

The format will be one hour with 5 minutes presentations by each of five panelists, followed by dynamic Q&A. The format will be similar to the recent 'Shared Cloud Services in Government' event, in which panelists from GSA, NIST, the Canadian Cloud Council and Industry helped raise awareness to the Federal cloud computing community about Shared Services in Government.

This event is hosted by FedPlatform.org (www.fedplatform.org) and sponsored by NJVC's Cloudcuity team (www.cloudcuity.com). We look forward to "seeing" you there!


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