NIST Aims to Nudge the Federal Government over the Cloud Computing Finish Line

At the direction of Vivek Kundra, chief information officer for the United States, the National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST) is pushing the federal government to the cloud computing finish line with the near completion of a roadmap to assist federal agencies moving to a cloud computing environment.

NIST is helping to translate mission requirements into technical portability, interoperability, reliability, maintainability and security requirements.  The roadmap document is the mechanism being developed by the NIST cloud computing program to define and communicate these prioritized requirements. Focusing its efforts using these priorities, NIST is working with other stakeholders to develop the standards, guidance and technology, which must be in place to enable the secure and effective deployment of the cloud computing model.

That USG Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap will include work completed by the NIST cloud computing strategic and tactical projects, the U.S. Federal CIO Council Cloud Computing Advisory Council Standards Working Group, and NIST-chaired public working groups.  The latter are designed to integrate NIST internal efforts with broader collaborative and external cloud computing activities.  

The NIST-chaired cloud computing public working groups include: 

1. Target USG Business Use Cases


2. Neutral Reference Architecture & Taxonomy


3. Standards  Roadmap,


4. Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart the Adoption of Cloud Computing (SAJACC), and


5. Cloud Security.

NIST’s efforts to get the roadmap done is herculean and admirable.  In the course of one year, the agency has developed from scratch a relevant, timely and collaborative approach for federal agencies to migrate to the cloud.  Although the final agency report is not due until the end of 2011, a lot of progress has been made.  For instance, a business use case proposal is available for viewing and comment.  Other materials are available as well. 

The working group on developing Neutral Reference Architecture and Taxonomy for the cloud has developed a great approach that federal CIOs can leverage when seeking to migrate to a cloud environment.  This working group expects to submit its final report 2.0 NIST Reference Architecture for Cloud Computing by September 2011. 

This effort is a big deal.  The federal government is the largest trendsetter in the IT space.  When the federal government adopts a standard or a technological approach, the IT ecosystem follows.  The fact that the federal government is moving so aggressively to adopt the cloud means that cloud computing will not be a passing fad, but instead be the new computing platform.