MGT 7-1.indd - KMI Media Group

Cloud computing, the increasingly
popular IT concept that uses a cloud to
symbolize the Internet as the data and application
services provider, shielding users
from the underlying complexity, is extending
its reach into the world
of geospatial intelligence.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency envisions establishing
a GEOINT distributed
computing cloud, contained
within a larger, high-performance
cloud, to achieve many
of the architectural objectives
in the Department of Defense
and intelligence community
missions.
Brian O’Toole
NGA’s interest in otoole.brian@geoeye.com
virtualization technology for
storage, networks and server processing,
and its alignment with service-oriented
architecture (SOA) objectives advocated by
DoD and the director of national intelligence,
are paving the way toward consolidated
cloud computing strategies for geospatial
information.
This comes at a time when geospatial
image providers, such as GeoEye and Digital
Globe, have experienced swelling demands.
“The key trends are speed and volume. The
volumes of data will continue to rise, along
with the demand for increased response time
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and larger, higher resolution areas,” said Brian
O’Toole, GeoEye chief technology officer.
DoD and intelligence clients not only
require more images faster; they also want
better, more useful images. “The military
wants larger areas that can be
accommodated by one image,
so we need to put multiple
images together without any
visible break lines between
the images, to produce
orthomosaics and orthoimages.
The value-add requires
additional processing of the
images into the equivalent
of maps,” said Ray Helmering,
GeoEye vice president of
engineering.
Such volume, speed and
variety of data presuppose the need for highperformance
computing and
easier access to information.
“We’ve seen a growing
trend by the military and
intelligence community
to employ Internet-based
solutions for Web hosting of
geospatial data,” said Stephen
Wood, vice president of
business operations and U.S.
defense sales, Digital Globe.
“The sharing of geospatial data
and the setting up of easily
Joe Kraska
accessible geospatial cloud communities is
where we are headed.”
Cloud computing essentially utilizes
virtualization and SOA in a networked, high
performance, highly scalable and easily
resizable computing paradigm, adding fault
tolerance for guaranteed reliability and other
“ilities,” as NGA refers to them. Information
is stored on network servers, but cached
temporarily on demand in client environments
from desktops to wireless handhelds. Similar
to comparing intranets with the Internet,
private clouds provide better security than
public clouds.
Because many terms get bandied about
when the subject of cloud computing is raised,
experts like to clarify. “As some technology
experts believe, virtualization gives you the
illusion of your own computer, while cloud
computing gives you the illusion of your
own data center,” said Joe
Kraska, manager, federal data
center research and prototype
operations, BAE Systems.
“And grid computing is more
static, while cloud is elastic
and grows.”
However, elasticity and
growth raise the need for
sophisticated security, an area
BAE is now addressing. “We
are looking at ways to deploy
private clouds that would
satisfy our customers’ security
requirements,” said Kraska.
VARYING IMPLEMENTATIONS
Like the industry’s varying emphases
on the definition, many different cloud
implementations will likely emerge, given
the recognized IT benefits. “Cloud computing
virtualization provides an IT avenue to
achieve many of the architectural ‘ilities’ that
our customer missions require: reliability,
availability, scalability, agility, interoperability
and so on. SOA objectives are leading our
communities of interest to drive toward
interoperable, Web-enabled services offerings,
potentially allocated and bundled to reflect
centers of excellence,” said Christopher
Cuppan, National System for Geospatial-
Intelligence (NSG) chief architect, NGA Office
of the Chief Information Officer.
Many of NGA’s worldwide data providers
are, in themselves, discrete centers of
excellence that could reside on a cloud platform,
collectively forming clouds within a
larger cloud. “Our customers require seam-
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