“What leadership means to me.” Initially I thought what an easy subject.  I’ll just think of great leaders in my lifetime, brainstorm attributes that I deemed necessary to be a great leader, select the leader of choice and explain why I considered this person to be a great leader.  As I began to brainstorm on traits of a leader, people that I admired began disappearing from this list.  Even more shockingly, my name vanished with minutes.  Later great CEOs, military leaders, politicians, and civil leaders vanished leaving a hand full of leaders accompanied by my mother, Patricia H. Bailey.

Within four years of graduating from high school, my mother was married with three kids.  During the fourth year, my father passed away leaving her with three children and a high school education.  Only twenty-two years old, she realized that the only way she could provide a decent life for her family was to obtain a college education.  With the help of her family and friends, my mother graduated from college with honors and later returned to earn her Master’s Degree in Education.  Although she never remarried, she provided us with a solid spiritual foundation and prepared us for the obstacles of life.

Having gone through so much as such a young age, my mother realized the beauty of life and how short life really is.  She also realized the importance of education and financial awareness.  During the summers she would purchase books on Math, English and Literature for the grade levels we were attending in the Fall.  This gave us a jump-start on the students in our class and kept our minds active during the summer.  This also assisted us in becoming accustomed to excellence and soon we expected excellence of each other and ourselves.  During this same period, my mother opened a saving account for each of us and began giving us allowances.  Initially, the allowance period was for one week, then two weeks and finally a month.  After receive your allowance, you would not receive any other funds until the allowance period was over.  We soon learned to budget our funds for the entire month.  My sister was the best – whenever we would go out, she would leave her money at home knowing that my brother or I would not let her go without.  Consequently, at the end of the month she would always have more money than we would.  As with the allowance, my mother gradually introduced us to our savings account.

All of us would make monthly trips to AmSouth Bank to deposit funds in our saving account.  The ritual continued for years.  As we grew older, our allowance increased and we had to decide how much to spend versus save.  We became motivated to save as our pennies became dollars and so on.  During the summers, my brother and I would cut lawns in the neighborhood to earn extra cash.  I can still hear my mother saying “It’s not how much you make – it’s how much you save.”  As I grew older and began researching other ways to increase the returns on our savings, my mother began to trust me to a make decisions with her money.  This was a major confidence booster for a teenage.  Actually, I cannot take all the credit, it was my older brother who introduced me to the stock market.  Even now my mother allows me to make her investment decisions.  Although education and financial awareness are important, a person needs much more to become a leader of the future.  They must have ethics and values.

During my childhood, my mother took special care to prepare us to become ethical leaders of the future.  It began with a solid foundation in Christianity.  It’s not just that my mother took us to church.  It’s the idea of practicing what you preached.  This is why it was so easy to follow her rules and to accept her teachings.  I can still hear her saying, “You can do anything you put your mind to.’ ‘Treat everyone like you would like to be treated.’ ‘If you don’t have anything good to say-don’t say anything’ and ‘Regardless of the outcome, never lie.’”  These words are constantly chiming in my ears and have become a part of my inner spirit.  These are a few of the values my mother instilled in her children and our friends.

My mother definitely exhibits attributes of a true leader.  In the mist of life’s adversities, my mother made tough decisions for the betterment of her family.  It was not about what was easy for Patricia H. Bailey, but what would help her children succeed in the future.  Leaders must also be able to develop new leaders, as my mother did with us.  Her teachings and style – practice what you preach – encouraged us to accept her principles.

Finally, my mother had ethics. A person can succeed using unethical practices, but I think great leaders win with ethics.  Great leaders would rather lose than win with their heads down.  So you asked, “What does leadership mean to me?” My mother, Patricia H. Bailey, exemplifies what leadership means to me.

I found this essay after 12 years during our family move over the summer and it reminded me of the sacrifice and love my mother displayed toward her “Three Musketeers” as she would call us.

By the way, I think it speaks to the character of the team at Sapient as they selected this as the winning essay about 13 years ago.

Who would your leader of choice be and why?

Content Management Systems (CMS) come in various shapes and sizes, each possessing different purposes and functions. So, if in the last post you took the “Do I Need CMS?” questionnaire and are now reviewing your needs,  you need to understand the different types of CMS to ensure that you get the system that best fits your needs.

 Types of CMS

Enterprise CMS:

 This type of CMS is a comprehensive solution that can deliver content management systems on an enterprise scale, such as to serve an entire corporation or other large organization.

These solutions are designed to increase efficiency where a large number of people are involved, allowing documents or cases to pass through the business lifecycle regardless of the size of the business. By bringing content management down to the user level, this type of CMS has the ability to more effectively manage business process d while still ensuring that any number of individuals can contribute their piece of the pie to the system as a whole.

This type of CMS can incorporate business functions such as human resource materials, invoicing, shipping information, customer relations and various other functions into the CMS itself. Most of these large scale types of CMS have the ability to be customized to further guarantee that the client organization will receive what they need out of these solutions.

The types of CMS solutions that are capable of effectively operating on an enterprise scale are largely made up of proprietary software vendors, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, IBM Enterprise Content Management, FileNet and several others. There are, however, open source providers such as Alfresco who have some of the industry’s leading solutions for this type of CMS.

Web CMS/ Portals:

 Web CMS or Portal systems are another type of CMS that is mainly used for content creation and management on the web.

Just as with the Enterprise CMS solutions, Web CMS systems can incorporate a number of functions and benefits. In general, these types of CMS allow numerous users to be able to contribute content to a website, which may be controlled by an “Editor” or someone who moderates what is actually published on the site.

They also typically provide features such as file check-in and check-out, project management, calendar systems, and internal forums.

Web CMS systems also differentiate themselves from other types of CMS in that the market is currently filled with viable open source options. These options allow an internal developer to control most of the modifications that need to be made to the solution.

 In case you missed my previous posts in the “What is CMS” Series, a CMS is the industry acronym for a “content management system.” We also talked about the benefits of CMS, but have yet to help you determine if this type of system is something you need.

So, back to helping you answer the question “Do I need CMS?”

To understand if you need one of these systems, you have to have a solid understanding of what your needs are. Let’s walk through this questionnaire to help you answer the question:

Do I Need CMS?

Question 1:

How often will my website need to be updated?  

If your website will need to be updated more than once a month, you probably need to consider implementing a CMS. Updating a website without a CMS can be a daunting and time consuming task, especially if there are only one or two people within an organization capable of handling the technical side.

Who will be doing the updating?

If a non-technical person will be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of your site, your answer to the question “Do I Need CMS” should absolutely be “yes”. In addition to making the process much easier for your non-technical operator, a CMS, when implemented correctly, can give users control over areas of the site that only control frequently changing content. This ensures that the integrity of the site’s design and layout will not be disturbed.

Do you plan to integrate a blog or other outward facing platform with your repository?

If you do, then hands down you need CMS. You want to have ready access within your blog to better control meta-tags, RSS feeds, multiple images per post, and of course, the archive. All of these things are crucial elements of a good blog and must be managed appropriately.

Do you need the ability to update remotely?

Absolutely one of the biggest values of CMS is the ability to update from any Internet browser. This freedom allows updates to be made from any device with Internet access, and, best of all, doesn’t require the purchasing and downloading of additional software. This opens up whole new possibilities as you gain the ability to access your CMS from anywhere.

How much control do your regular users need?

One of the benefits of CMS is that different roles and abilities can be assigned to different users, allowing one to have the ability to install a “plug in” of some sort that may add an added feature to the site, while another can only be responsible for editing and adding content. Another benefit of a CMS — in terms of control — is that templates, font, and color choices can be programmed so that individual content authors needn’t worry about them, ensuring that your site stays consistent, cannot alter them.

While reading through this “Do I Need CMS?” questionnaire, if you answered yes to any question I strongly recommend considering a CMS platform for your project.

This presentation shows how Armedia implemented an open source case management solution to help FederalConference.com in their planning and management of 3,000 events for the US Army. This presentation was given at Alfresco’s Content.gov event this year, and highlights the benefits of implementing Armedia Case Management with Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Repository.

Take a look!!

As mentioned in our article “What is Case Management” a case file consists of a collection of customer communications, forms, process documents, reports and supporting documentation along with other various documents and records. The information contained within these documents is extremely valuable, however if it exists only on paper or in a locked electronic format like PDF or Word, it can be extremely difficult to maximize the full benefits of that information.

So, obviously, the main overlying idea regarding the benefits of case management solutions is that they allow users to be able to compile these documents and records in a intuitive format, allowing for the information contained within a cases contents to be taken to their full advantage. In other words, the benefits of case management are that these solutions create “an information advantage.”

A key feature associated with a majority of the benefits of case management solutions is that they provide customer-centric content management systems that allow for a complete view of a single customer or instance. This is done by extracting information in a single document and automatically empowering the right people with the right information.

Benefits of case management solutions:

Improved Process Manageability: Several aspects of a well-designed Case Management system allow for significant improvement on internal processes. Customizable dashboards provide real-time insight into the current state of active processes at any level.

The screenshot below from our own software for case management depicts these benefits of case management. The customized interface allows for items and tasks to be highlighted which need immediate action, keeping case moving through your business process at an optimum rate.

Aside from improved access to personal workflow components, other benefits of case management include visibility of milestones, as well as metrics that report how other personnel are executing on their responsibilities (see screenshot below for an example from Armedia Case Management as to how this can be achieved).  These reports can help to identify bottlenecks and drive improvements. By having this information, companies can identify key areas such as simple task reassignments that can allow for improved workflow and processes.

Allows for Meaningful, Organized Information:  By having all of the information available within a single case file, information is readily available without the need for searching in a repository or locating a paper document. Case management solutions can access and archive any type of document that has been programmed into the system, allowing for interviews, forms, collections of customer communication, reports and supporting documentation, images, and notes by staff members to all be managed in a way that allows for the information contained within each document to be extracted and used effectively.

The screenshot below exemplifies benefits of case management in its ability for all of the information to be collected into a single user interface.

End Result = Better Decision Making: These improved processes and gained insight into workflow automation allow for greater efficiency to be easily achieved allowing for better decision making at both the individual and group level.

In conclusion, the benefits of case management allow for its users to have an “information advantage.” In other words, all of the information and associated documents they need to be able to handle a business problem or “case” are linked together within a single user interface.

CLICK HERE for more information about Armedia Case Management.

With a large portion of the United States Federal Government now using some sort of CMS system, the natural next step is working to make these solutions work better for their specific needs. This presentation, initially given at DrupalCampMD,  is one example that shows how case management solutions can deliver for the specific needs of the United States Government.

To really be able to answer the question “Why Open Source?” you must have a thorough understanding of the different benefits of open source software that businesses can experience. Today, there are open source office solutions available for almost every common type of enterprise software, from databases and, office applications to application servers and network security.

With many companies and government entities adopting open source solutions, it is becoming increasingly clear that price is not the only reason why open source technology solutions are being adopted. Keeping in mind that there are commercial software vendor solutions for each of the types of open source software, you have to ask yourself “What are the benefits of open source?” before you can determine why open source solutions should be a considered when choosing your next technology solution. So, let’s take a look.

Benefits of Open Source:

1. Quality - Studies show that one of the driving reasons why open source technologies are so popular is the vast quantity of companies reporting to have received desired ROI on their technology investments. The quality of open source software met or exceeded the expectations of 92 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by Forrester Research. Meanwhile, 87 percent of respondents said that open source software delivered the cost savings they were hoping for.

2. Customizable – Due to the fact that the source code is open in open source technology (hence the name open source), developers can create value-added solutions on top of the platform, enabling an easy path to deploy open source-based applications in production. This is an extremely big contributing factor why open source is so useful in so many types of organizations. The fact that everything from technical requirements to user interface can be altered completely changes the game in terms of what is needed for an open source solution.

3. Cost – Acquisition and entry-level costs associated with open source technology solutions tend to be minimal. This allows for more of an organization’s budget to be devoted to customizations and innovations, making the solution work best for their specific needs and requirements. The flexibility of open source solutions also allow for other associated costs, such as hardware updates, to be minimal.

4. Support Options – The fact that open source source code is freely available online has led to the creation of open source support communities for almost every solution. These communities are groups of developers who come together in their free time to keep track of issues through forums, newsletters, wikis, and email distributions. Because of this, when an issue occurs on an open source platform, companies’ internal technology experts can quickly and freely seek out the information they need to fix an issue in one of these locations.

5. Security – Many experts within the IT space argue that open source solutions are more secure than their commercial equivalents. Due to the openness of the code, developers and communities can thoroughly dissect every line and API call looking for vulnerabilities instead of taking the word of a sales representative. According to a study by Veracode, open source communities fixed security vulnerabilities twice as quickly as their commercial software vendor counterparts.

6. Interoperability – Open source technology solutions work extremely well with multiple data formats compared to proprietary vendors. If interoperability between other businesses, computers and users is extremely valuable to a company’s main operations, then being limited by the types of files that can be successfully transmitted would not be an ideal work situation. Open source allows freedom in this sense in both how it operates naturally, as well as the level to which developers can modify the code to operate with other file formats and systems

7. No Vendor Lock-In – A huge beneficiary component of choosing open source technology is that companies will not experience vendor lock–in that can severely limit users of proprietary packages. This places users at the hands of the vendor in terms of vision of the solution, requirements, pricing, priorities and timetables. Open source solutions allow for companies to make all of these decisions for themselves, assuring the solution benefits their needs.

These are a few principal examples why open source technology options can be beneficial to an organization. While open source options may not be the right answer for every organization and every business need, they absolutely should be considered.

In a Statement by Dr. David McClure, Associate Administrator, Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology, at an April 2011 Senate Subcommittee Hearing, McClure stated one of the biggest challenges federal agencies face in migrating to the cloud is data management. Data management in cloud computing is something that needs to be critically analyzed and strategized before solutions can be implemented. So lets take a look at some of the Data Management challenges that exist in Federal Cloud Computing Solutoins:

First of all, it is important to understand that the IT needs of global organizations pale in comparison with those of the US federal government. Quite simply, the US Federal Government is enormous – composed of more than 2.1 million full-time federal employees, each of who use at least one IT system and 2,094 federal government data centers composed of thousands of servers. Some reports estimate the majority of these severs are operating at 20 percent of capacity. Managing that amount of information is a daunting task that all agencies must face. For those who have managed to switch over to cloud based solutions, the change has taken a great amount of time and effort. This can be seen in the examples of cloud computing within the federal government.

Moving toward the government of the future, agencies will continue to be challenged to acquire, identify, integrate, analyze and disseminate relevant information to achieve high performance. In addition, analysts must overcome the following challenges:

• Information Overload – too much information to process
• Information Accessibility – ability to access information needed
• Missed Discoveries – patterns or problems previously overlooked
• Limited Access to Organizational Knowledge – unclear understanding of document flow and ownership leaving questions around permissions
• Reporting Challenges  - unclear on how to report problems that need to be addressed within the system

Not to mention the initial consolidation of unprecedented amounts of data that will need to be addressed before a cloud solution can be implemented, a process that could very quickly become a resemblance of coming home to find out someone is reorganizing your closet and currently has all of your clothes spread out across your room. Regardless of the end result, that’s enough to overwhelm anyone.

That being said, consolidation and migration data management strategies need to be tackled first. Managing data during migration is a common challenge organizations face with the cloud, with a number of organizations reporting individuals or business units moving often sensitive data to cloud services without the approval or even notification of IT or security. In both public and private cloud deployments, it is important to protect data in transit, this includes:

• Data moving from traditional infrastructure to cloud providers
• Data moving between cloud providers
• Data moving between instances (or other components) within a given cloud.

A number of technology practices that are not new to the enterprise information arena are key in focusing attention to prevent problems on these three areas. These include Database Activity Monitoring, File Activity Monitoring, Data Loss Prevention all of which are seasoned practices geared towards tracking data movement and migration.

Once information is migrated to the cloud or other repository, controls must be implemented to ensure that all data is continuously utilized in methods that are in accordance with policies and expectations. In order for this to be accomplished, there needs to be a clear understanding of the processes and policies for both understanding how agency information is used, and governing that usage.

Information Governance is the solution to these panic-attack inducing challenges. A coherent information governance solution includes the systems, processes and solutions which manage information according to its value and risk, thus treating information as a corporate asset which can be effectively discovered, managed and disposed of.

Information governance includes the policies and procedures for managing information usage. It includes the following key features:

• Information Classification – high-level descriptions of important information categories. Unlike with data classification the goal is not to label every piece of data in the organization, but rather to define high-level categories like “regulated” and “trade-secret” to determine which security controls may apply
• Information Management Policies – Policies to define what activities are allowed for different information types.
• Location and Jurisdictional Policies – Policies that outline where data may or may not be geographically located. These policies typically have important legal and regulatory ramifications.
• Authorizations – Define which types of employees/users are allowed to access which types of information
• Ownership – Who is ultimately responsible for the information
• Custodianship – Who is responsible for managing the information, at the bequest of the owner.

Another aspect of data management that many experts believe will be key in allowing agencies to meet their security requirements with their cloud computing efforts will be the ability for agencies to track changes to documents to the point of knowing who made a change and what the change was. The logging and auditing controls provided by some vendors are not yet as robust as the log controls provided within enterprises and enterprise applications. The challenge here is to ensure that, post incident, agencies can almost immediately know where the issue occurred, what login credentials were used, and what was done (edit, download, change access, etc.) to a document.

Effective data management of the billions of documents archived by the federal government both in-transit and in stored repository must be controlled by guidelines and procedures. However, once this hurdle is tackled, federal agencies will be able to utilize their information on a whole new level. Increased compliance, exposure of missed problems and patterns unattainable without the use of Big Data, and all around better decision making are results that will be seen in every agency effectively utilizing their data.

McClure is far from alone in citing concerns regarding the security of cloud computing as a challenge, with 94% of respondents citing it as a cloud risk in a Lockheed Martin study. Recent hacker attacks, the rise of groups like Anonymous, and the sensitivity of government data and personally identifiable information are each major factors leading to security concerns. Other major concerns listed in other studies that have been conducted include potential data loss or leakage, robust identity authentication and credential management, service and traffic hijacking and secure and timely identity provisioning.

For many organizations, security of information is one of the most critical business risks. This is why many of the examples of cloud computing in the federal government that we have covered in this series have opted for the “private cloud deployment model. The security risks associated with the billions of documents that are archived by the federal government may be driven by a need to protect intellectual property, trade secrets, personally identifiable information, or other sensitive information. Making sensitive information available on the Internet requires a significant investment of time and attention in security controls and monitoring of access to the content and the pathways to the information.

Experts agree that a major factor attributing to the level of confidence felt by agencies in the continuing push for federal agencies to migrate to the cloud is establishing trust in the security of cloud computing options. Yet, they also agree that any measure must be countered with effective efforts to ease cloud computing challenges. As with everything in life, the key to smooth transitions lies in:

-       Clear and definite guidelines provided to lead the way

-       An understanding of the unique security needs

The most important standards for federal cloud computing security are in Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). FedRAMP is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. These standards ensure that services which are shared among various agencies have equal, if not better, security implications than what the GSA would implement themselves.

Other efforts that have been made to try to increase security of cloud computing include the National Cyber Security Education Initiative, which aims to improve the effectiveness of the cyber security force, and the Cloud Security Alliance, a nonprofit organization made up of industry-leading cloud vendors to promote best practices for providing security assurance for cloud computing. These are a few of the several deliberate efforts made ensuring the federal government’s move to the cloud fully considers advantages and risks associated with cloud technologies through clearly discussing standards and security requirements.

As far as providing a clear understanding to the unique needs associated with the security of cloud computing, agencies and contractors must first understand the characteristics of that particular agency’s workload, such as the privacy requirements in the healthcare and finance realms, to be able to understand what they need from a trust perspective.

Defining the security challenge in a confined way is multifold. It is important that agencies take measures to ensure that security boundaries are clearly defined, with SLAs on security, response plans and continuous monitoring programs, in addition to complying fully with the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). NIST also recommends intense vetting of cloud service providers, comparing its security precautions with current levels of security in on-premise implementations to ensure that the provider is achieving security levels that are equal to or better than ones already in practice.

Some other best practices that are mutually understood across the various guiding agencies are as follows:

• Include procedures to audit a cloud provider’s secure coding practices
• Define and enforce strong password policies
• Consider user-centric authentication to the cloud service (systems where users, rather than service providers, control their identity credentials
• Require cloud computing partners to conduct risk assessment and vulnerability analysis
• Ensure cloud providers can map policy and procedures to any security mandate or security-driven contractual obligation
• Assign specific physical security obligations to specific personnel who are appropriately placed within a cloud providers organization
• Ensure that the CSP is compliant with global security standards like ISO 27001 ISMS or other international industry standards
• A disaster recovery team and communication plan should be in place at all times.

In recent months, overall levels of concern around the security implications of cloud computing have eased due to several new initiatives and practices that are in place. FedRAMP and The Cloud Security Alliance are just a few of the steps that the federal government has taken to ensure that the cloud computing initiative will not compromise security of government data or the private information of its people.

Even as concerns for the security of cloud computing continue to ease, both because of the measures being taken and because of more educated customers, experts strongly recommend following best practices diligently.

The concerns mentioned in this blog series were attained from a quote given by Dr. David McClure, Associate Administrator, Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology, at an April 2011 Senate Subcommittee Hearing,

To learn about the different cloud deployment models, view part one of this blog series HERE

Throughout the development of this massive initiative, concerns that are unique to federal agencies have started to become clear to information technology professionals. In a statement made by Dr. David McClure, Associate Administrator, Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology, at an April 2011 Senate Subcommittee Hearing, McClure stated: there continues to be a need for more thorough understanding of cloud computing deployment models, unique needs related to the security of cloud computing, and data management challenges.

This three post series will focus on highlighting the concerns within each of those three umbrella categories of concern. For now, lets talk about the cloud computing deployment models.

Cloud computing is defined to have several deployment models, each of which has specific trade-offs for agencies which are migrating services and operations to cloud based environments. Because of the different characteristics and trade-offs of the various cloud computing deployment models, it is important the agency IT professionals have a clear understanding of their agency’s specific needs as well as how the various systems can help them meet these needs.

Cloud Computing Deployment Models:

Private cloud.

The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers (e.g., business units). It may be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises

In general, federal agencies and departments opt for private clouds when sensitive or mission-critical information is involved. The private cloud allows for increased security, reliability, performance, and service. Yet, like other types of clouds, it maintains the ability to scale quickly and only pay for what is used when provided by a third party, making it economical as well.

One example of a private cloud computing deployment model that has been implemented in the federal government relatively recently was implemented by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which allows researchers to access and utilize servers on demand.

Community cloud.

The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a specific community of consumers from organizations that  have shared concerns (e.g.,  mission, security requirements,  policy, and compliance considerations). It may be owned, managed, and operated by one or more of the organizations in the community, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.

The community cloud deployment model is ideal and optimized for agencies or independent organizations that have shared concerns, and therefore need access to shared and mutual records and other types of stored information.

Examples might include a community dedicated to compliance considerations or a community focused on security requirements policy.

Public cloud.

The general public provisions the cloud infrastructure for open use. It may be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic, or government organization, or some combination of them.  It exists on the premises of the cloud provider.

The public cloud deployment model have the unique advantage of being significantly more secure than accessing information via the Internet and tend to cost less than private clouds because services are more commoditized.

Research by the 1105 Government Information Group found that federal agencies interested in public clouds are most commonly interested in the following four functions:

• Collaboration
• Social Networking
• CRM
• Storage

One example of a public cloud deployment model based solution is the Treasury Department, which has moved its website Treasury.gov to a public cloud using Amazon’s EC2 cloud service to host the site and its applications. The site includes social media attributes, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter which allows for rapid and effective communication with constituents.

Hybrid cloud.

The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud deployment models (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).

Large portions of agencies that have already switched some processes over to cloud based computing solutions have utilized hybrid cloud options. Few enterprises have the ability to switch over all of their IT services at one time, the hybrid option allows for a mix of on base and cloud options which provide an easier transition.

NASA is one example of a federal agency who is utilizing the Hybrid Cloud deployment model. Its Nebula open-source cloud computing project uses a private cloud for research and development as well as a public cloud to shared datasets with external partners and the public.

The hybrid cloud computing deployment model option has also proven to be the choice option for state and local governments as well, with states like Michigan and Colorado having already declared their cloud computing intentions with plans illustrating hybrid cloud deployment models.

Although there are many types of cloud computing deployment models, there probably is one that is right for every environment. Its just a matter of evaluating needs and circumstances to understand which one is the right fit.

Please stay tuned for the rest of this three part blog series as we look at the other challenges facing cloud computing.

The concerns mentioned in this blog series were attained from a quote given by Dr. David McClure, Associate Administrator, Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology, at an April 2011 Senate Subcommittee Hearing. All definitions for the different cloud computing deployment models are the official definitions adhered to by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).