IBM Opens Federal Cloud Innovation Center
IBM today announced a Federal Cloud Innovation Center dedicated to helping federal agencies and other public sector organizations advance the adoption of cloud computing across the government.
The new IBM Federal Cloud Innovation Center in Washington, D.C., will bring IBM's cloud computing research efforts closer to federal agencies to develop specialized technologies and methods for building mission-ready clouds. The IBM center will draw on the cloud computing expertise of more than 500 IBM professionals aligned to the center and IBM's global network of more than 37,000 cloud industry experts. These experts include IBM researchers, IT infrastructure architects, software developers and consultants with deep industry knowledge in managing major transformation projects across the federal government as well as implementing cloud solutions.
A central focus of the center will be to work with the government to explore further the adoption of open standards for cloud computing across the federal government. Open standards in cloud computing provide integration, break down barriers between clouds within government, and drive workload portability. IBM is a significant contributor to OpenStack, cloud standards and other open protocols that can help ensure today's clouds will have accessibility. IBM brings unique implementation capabilities on top of the open source code for agencies looking to quickly and securely deploy open technologies in their cloud computing environments.
The center's staff will also collaborate with federal agencies and other clients on new security innovations that would protect the nation's mission critical data housed in the cloud. IBM researchers continue to develop new methods for data encryption in the cloud, ensuring data always remains secure while it's being transported, searched and processed. Also, the center is able to help agencies exploit the more than 3,600 cloud APIs IBM has in its portfolio for integration and hardware configurations. These APIs enable faster customization of cloud solutions to the specific needs of federal government clients.
"IBM's research collaborations with the government have led to major advancements in networking, high-performance computing and most recently in the emerging field of cognitive systems," said Dr. John E. Kelly III, IBM senior vice president and director of IBM Research. "We see a tremendous opportunity to further the development of cloud technologies with the federal government by providing access to the latest breakthroughs in security and reliability coming out of IBM's research labs."
The new cloud innovation center will host and deliver its client events and demonstrations in IBM's Institute for Electronic Government at 600 14th Street, NW. The innovation center will pull together IBM's technical capabilities and expertise throughout the company with the ability to prototype and collaborate with federal agencies, academia and other institutions in the Washington metropolitan area and nationally on cloud computing. The IBM Federal Cloud Innovation Center will provide access to skilled experts in Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, and Business Process as a Service. Consultants with agency-specific expertise will also be on staff to help each federal agency quickly and effectively take advantage of the cloud.
"Our work at the center will help evolve cloud in these early days of its rollout across the federal government into a platform agencies can trust and grow off of," said Anne Altman, general manager, IBM US Federal. "Now is not the time for government to settle for what is only available commercially. Now is the time for them to join with industry to build security, reliability and standards that will make for a trusted government cloud environment."
The center will be led by IBM's Chief Innovation Officer for US Federal, Dr. Jane Snowdon, a former IBM Research executive who recently joined IBM's Federal team. Experts from the IBM Federal Industry Solution Center in Gaithersburg, Maryland will participate in the delivery of the center's mission. Also part of the center will be resources from IBM's SmartCloud for Government, designed to help government organizations respond to technology requirements more quickly, and SoftLayer, an IBM Company. IBM's SmartCloud for Government FISMA-compliant cloud environments are part of IBM's established and dedicated Federal Data Centers (FDC) in Colorado, North Carolina and West Virginia, which provide secure and comprehensive certified multi-tenant cloud computing capabilities to federal government clients. FISMA-compliant SoftLayer data centers in Ashburn, Virginia, and Dallas, Texas, provide high-performing cloud computing on demand, delivered as bare metal as well as virtual servers.
