MGT 7-1.indd - KMI Media Group
MGT 7-1.indd - KMI Media Group
MGT 7-1.indd - KMI Media Group
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Cloud computing, the increasingly<br />
popular IT concept that uses a cloud to<br />
symbolize the Internet as the data and application<br />
services provider, shielding users<br />
from the underlying complexity, is extending<br />
its reach into the world<br />
of geospatial intelligence.<br />
The National Geospatial-Intelligence<br />
Agency envisions establishing<br />
a GEOINT distributed<br />
computing cloud, contained<br />
within a larger, high-performance<br />
cloud, to achieve many<br />
of the architectural objectives<br />
in the Department of Defense<br />
and intelligence community<br />
missions.<br />
Brian O’Toole<br />
NGA’s interest in otoole.brian@geoeye.com<br />
virtualization technology for<br />
storage, networks and server processing,<br />
and its alignment with service-oriented<br />
architecture (SOA) objectives advocated by<br />
DoD and the director of national intelligence,<br />
are paving the way toward consolidated<br />
cloud computing strategies for geospatial<br />
information.<br />
This comes at a time when geospatial<br />
image providers, such as GeoEye and Digital<br />
Globe, have experienced swelling demands.<br />
“The key trends are speed and volume. The<br />
volumes of data will continue to rise, along<br />
with the demand for increased response time<br />
www.<strong>MGT</strong>-kmi.com<br />
and larger, higher resolution areas,” said Brian<br />
O’Toole, GeoEye chief technology officer.<br />
DoD and intelligence clients not only<br />
require more images faster; they also want<br />
better, more useful images. “The military<br />
wants larger areas that can be<br />
accommodated by one image,<br />
so we need to put multiple<br />
images together without any<br />
visible break lines between<br />
the images, to produce<br />
orthomosaics and orthoimages.<br />
The value-add requires<br />
additional processing of the<br />
images into the equivalent<br />
of maps,” said Ray Helmering,<br />
GeoEye vice president of<br />
engineering.<br />
Such volume, speed and<br />
variety of data presuppose the need for highperformance<br />
computing and<br />
easier access to information.<br />
“We’ve seen a growing<br />
trend by the military and<br />
intelligence community<br />
to employ Internet-based<br />
solutions for Web hosting of<br />
geospatial data,” said Stephen<br />
Wood, vice president of<br />
business operations and U.S.<br />
defense sales, Digital Globe.<br />
“The sharing of geospatial data<br />
and the setting up of easily<br />
Joe Kraska<br />
accessible geospatial cloud communities is<br />
where we are headed.”<br />
Cloud computing essentially utilizes<br />
virtualization and SOA in a networked, high<br />
performance, highly scalable and easily<br />
resizable computing paradigm, adding fault<br />
tolerance for guaranteed reliability and other<br />
“ilities,” as NGA refers to them. Information<br />
is stored on network servers, but cached<br />
temporarily on demand in client environments<br />
from desktops to wireless handhelds. Similar<br />
to comparing intranets with the Internet,<br />
private clouds provide better security than<br />
public clouds.<br />
Because many terms get bandied about<br />
when the subject of cloud computing is raised,<br />
experts like to clarify. “As some technology<br />
experts believe, virtualization gives you the<br />
illusion of your own computer, while cloud<br />
computing gives you the illusion of your<br />
own data center,” said Joe<br />
Kraska, manager, federal data<br />
center research and prototype<br />
operations, BAE Systems.<br />
“And grid computing is more<br />
static, while cloud is elastic<br />
and grows.”<br />
However, elasticity and<br />
growth raise the need for<br />
sophisticated security, an area<br />
BAE is now addressing. “We<br />
are looking at ways to deploy<br />
private clouds that would<br />
satisfy our customers’ security<br />
requirements,” said Kraska.<br />
VARYING IMPLEMENTATIONS<br />
Like the industry’s varying emphases<br />
on the definition, many different cloud<br />
implementations will likely emerge, given<br />
the recognized IT benefits. “Cloud computing<br />
virtualization provides an IT avenue to<br />
achieve many of the architectural ‘ilities’ that<br />
our customer missions require: reliability,<br />
availability, scalability, agility, interoperability<br />
and so on. SOA objectives are leading our<br />
communities of interest to drive toward<br />
interoperable, Web-enabled services offerings,<br />
potentially allocated and bundled to reflect<br />
centers of excellence,” said Christopher<br />
Cuppan, National System for Geospatial-<br />
Intelligence (NSG) chief architect, NGA Office<br />
of the Chief Information Officer.<br />
Many of NGA’s worldwide data providers<br />
are, in themselves, discrete centers of<br />
excellence that could reside on a cloud platform,<br />
collectively forming clouds within a<br />
larger cloud. “Our customers require seam-<br />
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