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October 20, 2008
DISA CIO: Cloud Computing 'Something We Absolutely Have to Do'
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Cloud computing has its share of naysayers, no doubt, but John Garing is not among them.
Garing, CIO of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), believes cloud computing will be a driving force in the Department of Defense (DoD). In fact, Garing says that although he shares some of the concerns espoused by the IT media (such as the danger of hosting multiple applications on a single platform), he, personally, is more than optimistic, calling cloud computing "something we absolutely have to do."
"We have seen what ... Amazon [and] Google have done, and it seems to us that there is a need for that," he explains. "For example, if you deploy a force somewhere in the world for disaster relief ... or a special operations team, they ought to be able to connect to the network like you or I can from home, and bring together or compose ... the services and information they need for what they're doing at that particular place and time, rather than have to connect to a bunch of applications."
Step 1: RACE
The first step in this journey kicked off on Oct. 14, when DISA's RACE (Rapid Access Computing Environment) infrastructure went live. RACE is a shared services cloud that gives DISA customers on-demand, self-service access to developmental testing resources. Although RACE is located entirely within DISA's walls, customers still get the public cloud experience with a Web portal, 24-hour-a-day availability, a service catalog and a credit card payment option. RACE supports applications built on either the LAMP or Windows stacks.
Like most cloud computing initiatives, efficiency and cost-savings were big drivers of RACE. Garing says the ability for users to compose services in minutes and pay for the testing infrastructure only as they use it is a better option than the "elaborate process" of writing a funding document, doing an interdepartmental requisition for funds transferred and so on. A week ago, he saw someone experimenting on RACE provision a Web site and do the funds transfer in only 7 minutes. "That's pretty impressive for the Department of Defense, or the federal government," he jokes. "Seven months would be more like it."
In terms of cost, Garing believes the cloud model must be "a whole lot cheaper than the way we do business traditionally" because it helps avoid a large capital investment. The old acquisition model includes over-provisioning infrastructure for each application to meet uncertain demand, resulting in untold quantities of idle resources. Additionally, Garing says, DISA has a full cost recovery policy for IT expenditures. With a five-year straight-line depreciation period and two-year average contracts, DISA's users do not have much time to recover their costs. With RACE, however, all they have to do is turn resources on and off in DISA's datacenters.
Alfred Rivera, director of computing services for DISA, says the foundation of RACE is the agency's capacity on demand initiative. The physical resources for RACE are located in DISA's datacenters, but it has entered into contracts with various vendors to buy capacity "by the drink," with the vendors retaining capital ownership of the boxes. He elaborated that this is a "joint capacity" relationship where DISA manages capacity utilization in support of its customers, and the vendors ensure DISA has the capacity to meet its growth demands.
For now, the processing contracts for RACE belong to HP, Sun, ViON and Apptis, with ViON also winning the storage contract.
A second-order effect of the cloud initiative, says Rivera, is the ability to put in place a standard, homogenous architecture, which further reduces costs and complexity. Garing says the traditional procedure is that customers go to Rivera's Computing Services Directorate to host their applications, and are charged for the services they want. However, he added, configurations vary greatly depending on which division is develops the applications and which contractors they choose to work with. With RACE, he says, departments need to specify with contractors that applications must conform to either LAMP or Windows.
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