The U.S. Census is a really important process.

Done every 10 years, it’s what keeps the government informed about changes in population so that legislative representation can be adjusted, among other goals.  It’s what determines how many Congressional reps Vermont should have versus, let’s say, California.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the Census this time around used cloud technology to gain efficiencies and produce better information. In an article in Network World, the U.S. Census bureau praised the cloud for helping it save a serious chunk of change: $2 million annually. The Bureau used both SaaS and IaaS applications to ensure that accurate data was collected.

According to an article I read, the Bureau considers its cloud approach the most cost-effective and efficient way to meet the requirements of the survey. “We’ve gone from a model where we had one application on one server,” said Brian McGrath, CIO for the Census.  “Now we’ve got hundreds of guests in our virtual farms and we are realizing significant savings of $2 million a year because we’ve compressed down our hardware footprint,” he said.

McGrath added: “There are still some concerns about the security in the public cloud. I have every confidence that those will work out in the coming years.” (How did I know that line was coming?)

It’s great to see such an important civic project using the cloud and profiting from it. I know that other government agencies, as well as private firms, will be inspired by the Bureau’s use of publicly hosted data — despite some security concerns. More companies will join the cloud bandwagon. And enterprises can take comfort in knowing that they have 24/7 cloud monitoring to stand behind them and help protect their data and apps.

A faster web bodes well for the Cloud

Researchers at MIT say that the future of the internet looks like this: speeds up to 1,000 times faster than currently and, strangely, using less energy than what’s needed now. A faster internet, says an article I read, would also make high-speed data access a lot cheaper.

What would that mean for the average user today? A user who has a hard time downloading a 100MB file could easily send a 10GB file, with the web running 100 times faster, according to an MIT researcher.

More importantly, the question is, how would the web get so much faster?

The answer is replacing electrical signals inside routers with faster optical signals, says MIT. This way, much more powerful computer processors, such as 16-bit processors, won’t run into choke points on the web.  “I think the Internet will not be fast enough within three to five years,” said Vincent Chan, an electrical engineer and professor at MIT.

But optical fibers are the technology that will speed things up, and, while they are more complicated to deal with, they are already used widely on the Internet — spanning huge distances and even continents.

This is a grand vision of the future of the web, and one that will no doubt make running cloud computing-based applications even more appealing for businesses. That should spur greater demand, too, for all kinds of cloud services, including monitoring tools that ensure apps are running smoothly.   Check out the benefits of cloud-based monitoring!

President Obama is pushing cloud computing and the U.S. government has created an app store (Apps.gov). Yet federal officials still have plenty of questions and concerns surrounding security on the cloud. A recent PCWorld magazine article cited a GAO report that was released this week  that listed several security concerns — among them, vendors using ineffective security practices, agencies not able to examine the security controls of cloud suppliers , criminals targeting data-rich clouds, and agencies losing access to their data if the relationship with a vendor ends.

The report apparently is in response to federal agencies embracing the cloud too passionately, if I can use that term in connection with the government. Cloud computing will give the U.S. government multiple benefits, including much lower IT costs. But agencies are migrating their data to the cloud before the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and supporting agencies have developed a government-wide security strategy, Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), was quoted saying in the article.

And the government is taking action to address security issues. For one, several agencies have joined a new effort called the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Pilot program (FedRAMP) in order to develop security and certification standards.

In the piece, Mike Bradshaw, director of Google Federal, stated his firm belief that the cloud would actually improve data security for the government, as Cloud vendors store data on multiple servers in multiple locations — making it difficult for cybercriminals to target one location, he said.  Redundancy also means agencies are protected against data loss. “The cloud enhances security by enabling data to be stored centrally with continuous and automated network analysis and protection,” Bradshaw said. “When vulnerabilities are detected they can be managed more rapidly and uniformly. Cloud security is able to respond to attacks more rapidly by reducing the time it takes to install patches on thousands of individual desktops or hundreds of uniquely configured on-premise servers.”

Another point: use of cloud computing will help the government reduce the number of data centers that it uses, helping to save money. Over the past 10  years, the number of government data centers rose from about 430 to 1,100. An April study by the Brookings Institution found that U.S. agencies can save 25% to 50% of IT costs by moving to cloud computing, according to the article.

OK, so security is still an issue — especially in light of some very public platform failures. But I don’t think the government will ever consider abandoning cloud computing initiatives, considering how far it’s come, and how vocal it’s been for its advancement. Yet, clearly, security remains on the minds of the U.S. government, but also the private sector.

And until we all come up with some industry-wide standards, the safest bet is for both government and private industry to employ cloud-based IT monitoring solutions to track the performance of third parties (what everybody is worried about in the first place) who are entrusted with clients’ private data.  Monitoring solutions can take care of important tasks like checking on cloud platform up-time and SLAs as well as notify you of breaches and downtime.

There’s plenty of evidence out there dramatizing how monitoring solutions have benefited companies. Why not take some time to check out the stories?

In this blog, we’ve been talking lately about how more and more schools are optimizing the learning environment by adding cloud services such as email applications and online course management tools. Schools are saving lots of money by lowering IT costs, scaling back IT departments or freeing them up to do more important, more strategic work.

At the same time, many are realizing that now that they’ve made their lives simpler with cloud-based services and platforms, they’ve got even more of a special obligation to deliver quality web learning experiences — uninterrupted and securely to students and professors. Virtualization and cloud technology demands that schools:

1. Optimize user experience with improved service delivery;
2. Simplify management of campus, multi-location and remote learning environments;
3. Predict and prevent performance and service issues before users are affected via notifications that come in a multitude of options;
4. Deliver consistent, reliable service throughout the campus;
5. Detect potential service delivery threats and risks not seen by traditional monitoring solutions;
6. Achieve peak operating efficiencies for networks, applications and services;
7. Lower the total cost of ownership and improve the productivity of IT staff.

Read back to #3 for a minute. When monitoring website performance, transactions and cloud providers, you can’t beat 100% cloud-based monitoring solutions, like Monitis, not only because they work even if your servers are down, but because they can detect slowdowns and other issues and notify you before they reach the crisis stage — giving you time to add capacity to servers or take other preventive measures.

When you’ve got the right tool in place to monitor performance, track issues and then receive good information that helps you prevent disasters, you can pretty much guarantee better service to students and faculty and save money, too.