"GovCloud: The Book" Launched at National Press Club Event

As many of you know, today marked the official launch of my first book - GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government. Today's venue was the National Press Club in downtown Washington, DC. Known as "The Place Where News Happens", the locale was certainly fitting as cloud computing leaders from government and industry gave the audience an update on GovCloud's progress.

The morning's highlight was the keynote presentation from Ms Dawn Leaf, NIST Senior Executive for Cloud Computing. Her presentation covered the universal cloud computing challenges and outlined how NIST's leadership is helping federal agencies effectively address them in turn.

Insightful presentations were also provided by:

• Bob Gourley, Founder/Author CTO Vision and Former DIA CTO
• Brand Niemann, Director, Semantic Community and former Senior Enterprise Architect and Data Scientist, U.S. EPA
• Jerry Smith, Office of DoD Executive Agent for IT Standards; and
• Rob Williams, President Clear Government Solutions, a GSA IaaS BPA awardee
      

I would like to give my sincere thanks to my co-author Don Philpott, my publisher Government Training Inc. and my employer NJVC  Without their assistance and support, none of this would have been possible.

Download Dawn Leaf

Download Bob Gourley

Download Brand Niemann

Download Jerry Smith

Download Rob Williams

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"Cloud Musings on Forbes" Launched!!

Today I published my first post on Forbes.com!!

At the invitation of Bruce Upbin, Forbes.com editor, I will be contributing posts monthly. I see this not only as an honor, but as an acknowledgement of the importance of the Federal shift to cloud. As I said in today's post, the government has long been known for it's glacial speed and risk avoidance culture. It's aggressive transformation, however, represents a surprising shift towards an information technology leadership role.

Please join me on Forbes.com in discussing this important transformation with the broader business world!!

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Tech America and INSA Form Cloud Computing Advisory Groups

Last week TechAmerica announced the formation of a "cloud computing commission" to advise the White House on the current plans to steer more than $20B worth of IT services toward the cloud computing model. Co-chaired by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and VCE CEO Michael Capellas, the commission will provide recommendations for how agencies should roll out cloud technologies and suggest changes to policies that might hinder attainment of the government's goals.

While I applaud Tech America's efforts to help the government manage this important transition, my personal interest is more focused on the work being led by Bob Gourley at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. The INSA Cloud Computing Task Force, as an element of the INSA Cyber Security Council, will focus on ways to enhance adoption of cloud computing for national security missions. According to the email announcing the formation of this group:

" INSA members have been working closely with federal thought leaders to help refine Cloud Computing constructs. We see a need for more cross-discipline, cross-functional information exchange on this topic with a goal of providing actionable optimization ideas for federal decision-makers. Our second goal is to provide INSA members with a more in depth understanding of the special mission needs of national security agencies regarding cloud computing. Finally, a third goal is to examine emerging trends in cloud computing, resulting in an enhanced understanding of technologies driving public and private clouds."



I am personally involved in the INSA cloud activities and also hope to have an opportunity to support the TechAmerica efforts as well. If you are also interested in shaping government cloud computing, I also urge your participation in these important efforts..

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