Charting the path to the cloud in the Intelligence Community

Accenture Federal Services

April 6, 2014

Accenture Federal Services

Given the momentum behind cloud computing across so many industries, it is not surprising that the Intelligence Community (IC) is taking notice. With IC CIOs being asked to do more to help advance mission capabilities while reducing IT costs, the cloud offers these leaders a powerful range of capabilities. Before making a move, however, CIOs require a holistic approach to build a high-performing cloud infrastructure.

In this report, we examine how cloud solutions are applied and the next steps IC CIOs should take along their cloud journey. At their core, cloud solutions are an established set of infrastructure technology resources and services that are made available to consumers through several possible deployment models. These models are:

• Private cloud. Operated solely for an organization, a private cloud may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premises or off premises.

• Community cloud. This cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns. It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premises or off premises.

• Public cloud. A public cloud is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

• Hybrid cloud. A hybrid cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds, for example).

The cloud market is maturing rapidly with differing services converging as standard practices. This environment requires access to a standard set of proven solutions and related capabilities focused on implementation and management of cloud services. Accenture’s three-phase transformation model can help organizations move seamlessly from a reactive enterprise to a predictive, service-oriented, cloud-based architecture.

Learn more about this model and how Accenture has successfully implemented cloud in the Intelligence Community.

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