Page 228 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

MANA GEMENT STRATEGIES F O R THE CL OUD R EV OL UTION

in Pasadena, California, and Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Maryland, among other branches, has a need for
shareable resources that can be easily accessed by employees
in locations other than the one in which the data center was
built. In that sense, NASA has sometimes served as a symbol
for the federal government as a whole, where the number of

data centers has proliferated, growing from 498 centers 10
years ago to more than 1,200 today.
The federal government now spends $76 billion a year
on information technology, and Vivek Kundra, the first chief
information officer overseeing all federal data centers, ap-
pointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama, has endorsed
the concept of cloud computing as one way to bring escalat-

ing costs under control.
Kundra made a splash in September 2009 when he launched
apps.gov, a simple marketplace and rudimentary form of
cloud computing where federal agencies can go to buy soft-
ware. But another project has been proceeding behind the
scenes for the last 18 months, one whose long-term goals are
more ambitious than those of apps.gov: the Nebula Cloud
Computing Platform. The Nebula Cloud Computing Platform
is being worked on at the same site where Kundra announced

apps.gov, the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View,
California.
Kundra has made only a few short references to Nebula—
it’s still in an experimental stage—but few doubt that his and
other federal officials’ hopes are riding on it beyond the scant
mention that it has received. NASA in particular has a num-
ber of strategic goals riding on the Nebula project, goals that

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