NJVC Paper Outlines Potential Benefits of Custom Cloud Software; Kevin Jackson Comments

Federal agencies that use platform-as-a-service in their cloud computing strategy can cut development costs by 50 percent, according to a recently released white paper by NJVC and Virtual Global.

In “Platform as a Service (PaaS): What Is It? Why Is It So Important?,” authors Kevin Jackson and Cary Landis outline why they believe PaaS…

IBM to Expand International Presence Through Green Hat Acquisition

IBM will proceed with the acquisition of U.K. based software company Green Hat, as the companies have entered a definitive agreement.

According to a IBM release, once final, Green Hat will join IBM’s Rational Software business, which will focus on helping businesses integrate applications, create virtual protocols and engage third-party software.

Green Hat was founded in 1996 and…

CSC Designs Govt Cloud; James Sheaffer Comments

Computer Sciences Corporation recently released its infrastructure-as-a-service CloudCompute for Government system, which the company says is designed exclusively for U.S. federal agencies and government personnel.

The company said the multi-tenant community cloud was built under National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines.

“This cloud offering addresses the federal agencies’ need to comply with…

NOAA Email Now in Google’s Cloud

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has moved its email system to cloud-based Google Apps for Government, Google announced Wednesday.

Kennith Jackson, deployment manager at Google Apps, wrote in a blog post that it took six months to move NOAA’s 25,000 employees, contractors and associates to the new email platform.

NOAA CIO Joseph…

Report: Virtualization Still Just Chatter or Catching Hold

Early December, Quest Software released information following a survey that labeled cost savings, user demand and expectations and managing a mobile workforce as driving forces behind moving to virtual servers. 

To Quest, the findings solidified the idea that server and desktop virtualization were moving into production instead of just being a concept. This conclusion is not…

Verizon, General Dynamics Among First In Line for FedRAMP Process

Companies that already provide cloud services to federal agencies will have their offerings vetted first under the new FedRAMP security assessment program.

Verizon Federal and General Dynamics‘ information technology business unit are among the companies who will have their cloud services reviewed under the new program according to Federal Times.

FedRAMP…

App Mall, Geospatial Collaboration in Works as Army Moves Intelligence to Cloud

In October, the director of the National Security Agency wanted to make clear to a Baltimore audience his views on the intelligence community using cloud computing.

“We need to go from our legacy databases to the cloud,” Army Gen. Keith Alexander said.

Alexander explained that cloud computing offers a better end-to-end view of…

IBM Moves Hong Kong-based Healthcare Provider Servers to the Cloud

IBM is to build a virtualized infrastructure to aid Hong Kong-based healthcare providers in consolidating physical servers and moving them to the cloud, the company has announced. 

According to the release, the company will complete a project that includes consolidating more than 100 servers into a cloud environment that will host Quality HealthCare Medical Services‘ mission…

Salesforce, Rypple Aim to Create a Social Enterprise to Promote Agency Goals

Last week, Salesforce.com announced a social networking acquisition that has been long in the making, according to John Wookey, executive vice president of advanced applications. 

The company said it will acquire Rypple, a cloud-based performance management services provider, and bring on all of Rypple’s staff and offerings. Wookey will run Rypple’s operations, which Salesforce will rename…

Autodesk Finalizes Acquisition of Horizontal Systems

The 3D design company, Autodesk, Inc., announced it has completed the acquisition of Horizontal Systems.

Horizon, which specializes in cloud-based building information modeling solutions, is set to contribute to Autodesk’s 360 BIM solution, with a focus on the architecture, engineering and construction industries.

“The acquisition of Horizontal Systems will help accelerate the movement of BIM to the…