When Using the Cloud Makes Sense

The federal government is fundamentally changing the way it operates. We are confronted with system-wide challenges ranging from the economy, the environment, to health care, etc. Therefore, our public infrastructure is not performing adequately and there are operational and public safety risks. Such challenges have forced the Federal government to take a front and center role in working across the public, private, and academic sectors to solve massively complex and cross-disciplinary, interdependent problems.

From an operational perspective, all systems operate today via human interactions with technology and with IT infrastructure as the foundational grid from which those interactions and transactions are enabled. Increasingly, more demands will be made of Federal government, for handling, managing, and overseeing transactions (e.g. Recovery.gov, Ethics.gov, Data.gov, etc.). As a steward and provider of services to citizens, what we provision requires 21st century infrastructure, know-how, and innovation.

Here is a list of Benefit Scenarios an agency may use when implementing cloud services. For a list of agencies that are implementing cloud service solutions, visit the Case Studies section.

Benefit Scenarios	Examples	Category	Case Studies
Rapid Collaboration within the Government Foster collaboration using Wikis for joint authoring	Rulemaking	SaaS
Rapid Information Exchange with the Public Collaborate with the public using a combination of Wiki’s and dedicated mailboxes	Public commentary on proposed rules or actions	SaaS
Share views, news and events within the government Enable staff to share and discuss views using blog tools	CIO Blog on Cloud Computing initiatives	SaaS
Enable participatory government Enable citizen participation using a combination of Wiki sites, mailboxes for questions, and online video	Electronic town hall meetings	SaaS
Reach out to an agency mission’s public constituency Engage with agency constituencies using social networking sites	Online communities for veteran’s outreach	SaaS	Department of Defense, U.S. Army Project Name: Army Experience Center
Provide on-demand internal messaging Use cloud-based email, calendar, chat and archival tools to improve internal messaging capabilities and reduce costs	Email, Archival and Spam filter migration	SaaS
Provide on-demand group collaboration Use cloud-based collaboration suites to enable both live and offline group collaboration	Instant communities of practice for a cloud computing implementation	SaaS
Provide on-demand online productivity tools Use cloud-based office suites to improve the effectiveness and reduce the cost of office automation	Replace routine or draft form document authoring with online suites	SaaS
Provide efficient technical help and support Use cloud-based services for help desks and desktop support to improve effectiveness reduce operational costs and add capabilities	Replace agency-maintained support automation software with cloud-based solutions	SaaS
Provide cross-agency Line of Business solutions Use cloud-based Federally-tailored services to support common LOB across agencies	Implement cloud-based multi-agency Human Resources line of business support	SaaS
Provide agency-specific Line of Business solutions Use cloud-based agency-tailored services to implement agency-specific LOB solutions	Implement a cloud-based case management solution	SaaS	Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) Project Name: Case Management System
Ease migration of legacy systems to SOA environment Use cloud-based service encapsulation and emulation to ease the migration of legacy mainframe and client/server applications	Migrate a mainframe application to cloud, adding SOA capabilities	PaaS
Provide agile high capacity computing Use cloud-based virtual machines to quickly provision and ramp up capacity for compute-intensive tasks	Provision and scale up multiple instances for a scientific computing task	IaaS, PaaS
Provide secure and precertified computing infrastructure environments Use certified secure cloud-based images to provide the most commonly used Agency computing environments	Provide agencies with instantly available secure and certified Windows or Linux server instances	IaaS
Provide secure and precertified software deployment platforms Use certified secure cloud-based images to provide the most commonly used Agency software deployment environments	Provide agencies with a standard and secure platform for deploying J2EE, LAMP or .Net applications	PaaS	Department of Treasury, Office of Comptroller of the Currency Project Name: Vulnerability Assessment System
Provide secure and precertified middleware services Use certified secure cloud-based images to provide common completely configured middleware applications	Provide an image-based complete but unpopulated directory service	SaaS
Provide precertified software development environments Use certified secure cloud-based images to provide standard, instantly available and preconfigured development environments	Provide an image-based complete but unpopulated .NET development environment for new developers	SaaS, PaaS
Provide secure intra-government data sets Use a secured cloud to provide inter-agency data sets for mutual access and processing	OPM providing HR data to agencies for HSPD-12 processing	PaaS	Federal Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (FGDC) Project Name: GeoCloud Initiative
Provide secure public data sets for transparency and public outreach Use a secured cloud to provide public-access data sets and metadata for general use and analysis	Data.gov	PaaS	Federal Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (FGDC) Project Name: GeoCloud Initiative
Provide data management and analytical capabilities to public Use a cloud-hosted platform to provide public access to government-created data management and analytic services	Genome analysis platform	PaaS	Federal Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (FGDC) Project Name: GeoCloud Initiative
Provide government website hosting services Use certified secure cloud-based images to migrate government web sites for improved scalability and reduced operating costs and environmental impact	Migrate specific .gov websites to a cloud platform	IaaS, PaaS
Provision on-demand IT infrastructure for new projects Use certified secure cloud-based images to immediately provision infrastructure ranging from a single server to a virtual data center	Provide instant archival infrastructure for NARA	IaaS
Support IT infrastructure demand spikes Instantly provision additional infrastructure capability by starting additional certified secure cloud-based images at peak periods	Periodic census activity	IaaS
Rationalize existing IT infrastructure More fully use existing infrastructure capability through virtualization and private cloud implementation	Make use of extra capacity at an existing data center to support census peak load	IaaS
Rapidly provision IT services beneath required compete limit using pCard Permit pCard holders to instantly provision services that fall below the required compete limitation	Instant provisioning for platform instances	SaaS
Rapidly provision IT services using agency purchase orders Enable completed agency purchase orders to instantly provision services that fall below the required compete limitation	Instant provisioning for email services falling below compete limit	SaaS
Rapidly provision IT services that fall above the required compete limit Enable rapid provisioning of services that fall above the mandatory compete limit by means of a reverse auction	Massive email provisioning	SaaS
Add to existing service order Enable incremental provisioning that adds on to an additional order, maintaining all common provisioning properties	Add CRM accounts to an existing CRM service	SaaS
Reduce an existing service order Enable incremental deprovisioning that reduces an existing service order, maintaining all common provisioning properties	Remove CRM accounts from an existing CRM service	SaaS

When Using the Cloud Makes Sense

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