The Cloud Computing Series

A Foreword from the MITRE Corporate Chief Engineer

Cloud computing is an approach for deploying capabilities on private, community-shared, and public-shared information technology (IT) environments. Enabled by new technologies, it holds promise for more efficient use of IT resources, yielding significant cost and capability advantages in some circumstances. However, a cloud computing approach presents new acquisition, management, and security challenges as well as financial trade-offs for those responsible for IT decision making. Private clouds can offer some advantages over traditional IT while maintaining maximum control, while community and public clouds can provide the ability to leverage the provider’s capital investment in return for "pay as you go" operational expense.

Special considerations arise when employing cloud computing in the DoD and Federal IT domain. DoD and Federal IT leaders are faced with a diversity of constraints that are unique to Government, including acquisition and funding models, particular cultural characteristics, and sophisticated adversaries. These constraints are coupled with the need for significant scale, assured performance, minimal downtime, and security needs that frequently exceed standard commercial practices. Many DoD and Federal programs are already wrestling with these considerations.

MITRE has assembled our Cloud Computing series of white papers into a convenient book. It's available for free to interested government employees.

In the MITRE cloud computing series of white papers, we have addressed many of these issues to help Federal leaders understand the benefits along with the challenges. We offer insight to help senior leaders put their organizations on a course to realize the benefits of cloud computing while minimizing the risks. The series includes the following papers:

• A Decision Process for Applying Cloud Computing in Federal Environments provides an overview of cloud computing and a roadmap for a structured decision process.
• Cost and Business Case Considerations comprehensively explores the costs to examine when employing a cloud-based approach in Government.
• Cloud SLA Considerations for the Government Consumer describes the elements that should be considered by consumers as they examine service-level agreements (SLAs) to meet their requirements.
• Information Security in the Clouds addresses the security challenges presented by cloud computing with a focus on public and community deployment models.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): A 2010 Marketplace Analysis surveys many exemplar offerings and identifies considerations for using unique PaaS capabilities.
• Products to Build a Private Cloud identifies market segments and categories of products available on the marketplace for contemporary private clouds.

The efforts to address the challenges of cloud computing-based systems are significant. MITRE is collaborating with industry and other organizations supporting the Federal Government, along with leveraging lessons learned and our own research, to provide the best advice possible. We hope that you find the materials helpful, and if you have feedback or suggestions, please contact us.

Sincerely,
Dr. Louis S. Metzger
Senior Vice President and Corporate Chief Engineer
The MITRE Corporation

Quick Links

• A Foreword from the MITRE Corporate Chief Engineer
  Dr. Louis S. Metzger
  
  
• A Decision Process for Applying Cloud Computing in Federal Environments
  Geoffrey Raines, Lawrence Pizette
  
  
• Cost and Business Case Considerations
  Lawrence Pizette, Jennifer Manring
  
  
• Cloud SLA Considerations for the Government Consumer
  Kevin Buck, Diane Hanf
  
  
• Information Security in the Clouds
  Donald Faatz, Lawrence Pizette
  
  
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  Geoffrey Raines, Lawrence Pizette
  
  
• Products to Build a Private Cloud
  Lawrence Pizette, Geoffrey Raines
  
  
• Download All Cloud Papers [ZIP, 5.4MB]
  

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