QUOTE (ComputerWorld)
Pentagon's IT unit seeks to borrow tech ideas from Google, Amazon, other companies
DISA CIO sees cloud computing as IT future, looks to learn from corporate approaches
By Patrick Thibodeau
July 17, 2008 (Computerworld) The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides most of the systems used within the Department of Defense, has been reaching out to a wide range of companies in the belief that their IT approaches — including the use of cloud computing technologies — could help DISA better support the military's warfighting men and women.
John Garing, a retired Air Force colonel who now is DISA's CIO, said he and his staff have met with their counterparts at businesses such as Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., United Parcel Service of America Inc. and travel-reservation systems operator Sabre Holdings Corp. to talk about how the companies use technology. A pending trip to FedEx Corp. is scheduled for next week, he added.
Garing said that he wants to learn all he can from the companies, and that it's important to do so "because most of us are the prisoners of our own experience." From the meetings that have been held thus far, Garing is convinced that cloud-based IT services will be the future of military data processing. Cloud computing is "going to be the way — it has to be," he said. "We have to get to this standard environment that is provisionable and scalable."
According to Garing, DISA has begun deploying a system that is similar architecturally to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) technology, a Web-based computing service that enables users to quickly scale up their processing capabilities. DISA's system, called the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), is scheduled to go into use at the start of the federal government's next fiscal year in October.
Read More in ComputerWorld
DISA CIO sees cloud computing as IT future, looks to learn from corporate approaches
By Patrick Thibodeau
July 17, 2008 (Computerworld) The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides most of the systems used within the Department of Defense, has been reaching out to a wide range of companies in the belief that their IT approaches — including the use of cloud computing technologies — could help DISA better support the military's warfighting men and women.
John Garing, a retired Air Force colonel who now is DISA's CIO, said he and his staff have met with their counterparts at businesses such as Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., United Parcel Service of America Inc. and travel-reservation systems operator Sabre Holdings Corp. to talk about how the companies use technology. A pending trip to FedEx Corp. is scheduled for next week, he added.
Garing said that he wants to learn all he can from the companies, and that it's important to do so "because most of us are the prisoners of our own experience." From the meetings that have been held thus far, Garing is convinced that cloud-based IT services will be the future of military data processing. Cloud computing is "going to be the way — it has to be," he said. "We have to get to this standard environment that is provisionable and scalable."
According to Garing, DISA has begun deploying a system that is similar architecturally to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) technology, a Web-based computing service that enables users to quickly scale up their processing capabilities. DISA's system, called the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), is scheduled to go into use at the start of the federal government's next fiscal year in October.
Read More in ComputerWorld