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EVM in the "Cloud"
March 25, 2010
This week I was at the CPIC conference in Washington DC. It was interesting how much interest there is in the “Cloud”. And of course Deltek was discussing their latest offering in the Cloud. For those of you that haven’t really figured out the cloud, let me rattle on for a couple of minutes.
Imagine a company that has huge numbers of servers. Let’s use Amazon as an example. I have heard that they have around 1,000,000 servers. That is not a typo. One million servers! For the average person this is beyond imagination. But for Amazon, they have to be up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that millions of transactions can take place immediately.
As you can imagine, they don’t need all those servers all the time. So what if your monthly runs that take hours could share some of that computing power and run in minutes. That is one part of the cloud.
Ok, if that is a good idea why not put your applications on their servers and accesses them via the web? That is part of the cloud concept also. If you use a web based email like Gmail or Yahoo Mail, a sales tool like SalesForce.com, or an online tax program you understand the concept. Nothing is on your computer but you can access it at anytime and download or transfer data at will.
If you consider a company like Deltek, they have a lot of applications that are either client server or are web based, but designed for their customers to put on their own servers. Often this means the customer has to buy a new server. Then of course they have to have IT people to maintain the server, administrators to maintain and update the application. Well, what if everything was on the web?
Enter Apptis. This is a company that has licensed the Amazon server capability and added federal security controls. Apptis and Deltek have formed a partnership to provide any Deltek product on the Cloud. Imagine purchasing an application based on usage and not number of ‘seats’. All costs are included. There is no separate maintenance, no servers to buy, no additional load on the IT staff.
What about the companies that already have Deltek products? Are they stuck with what they have? No! Deltek has a way to move current customer’s applications to the Cloud.
The initial reaction of everyone is, AAAAWW..What do you mean my sensitive data is not on my personal machines? Well, allow me to tell you that Apptis is listed on APPS.GOV because they have the security figured out enough to satisfy the federal agencies. Not only is it acceptable, there is a federal directive for every agency to pilot 1 or 2 Cloud efforts in 2010 and have some established Cloud capability in 2011.
What do you think? Are we on the verge of an all new computing paradigm?
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Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) is a structured, integrated approach to managing information technology (IT) investments. It is the primary process for making investment decisions, assessing investment process effectiveness, and refining investment related policies and procedures. It ensures that all IT investments align with the agency’s mission and support business needs while minimizing risks and maximizing returns through the investment’s lifecycle.
CPIC is mandated by the Clinger-Cohen Act which requires government agencies to use a disciplined process to acquire, use, maintain and dispose of information technology (IT). CPIC relies on a systematic approach to IT investment management in three distinct phases: Select, Control and On-Going Evaluation, to ensure each investment’s objectives support the business and mission needs of the Agency.
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