NESDIS Data Agnostic Cloud Computing Solution

Commercial cloud computing is our collective future. The cloud provides flexibility and availability that will revolutionize the way we work across government. The question then becomes how to best leverage cloud technology and commercial services -- this is our focus at NESDIS. We at NESDIS developed a cloud strategy which enables NESDIS to move to the commercial cloud if services are secure, scalable, life cycle cost effective and data source agnostic. Looking toward implementation, NESDIS asked subject matter experts "why not the cloud?" This simple yet innovative question enabled us create a pilot project which addressed the technical barriers which prevent NESDIS from migrating to the cloud. This pilot project additionally seeks to demonstrate that a NESDIS common cloud solution will allow the organization to best leverage the cloud. The functions of data ingest, compute, storage, discovery and dissemination are replicated across multiple different systems throughout NESDIS today, so the cloud will provide an opportunity to streamline our infrastructure. NESDIS will then make informed decisions on how and when to leverage the commercial cloud based on pilot results. The author will present the work done on the pilot to date as well as a forward-leaning vision of a NESDIS common, data agnostic cloud future.