The United States and Russia build a national cloud to save money and improve safety

In the summer of 2013, the U.S. Department of Defense plans to bid for cloud service providers through a bidding process with a contract value of nearly 500 million U.S. dollars. The successful cloud service provider is required according to the terms of the contract, to provide its own server for the storage of government data.

NVision Group, a large Russian IT company, recently completed the implementation plan for the state cloud and reported the solution to the Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications. At present, the program is being reviewed by the Russian Ministry of Communications and the Commission of Experts Acceptance.

According to the Nextgov website, the Department of Defense Information Security Bureau plans to hold a bidding activity for cloud technology to provide services with a project budget of 450 million U.S. dollars. The bidding result will be announced before the end of August 2013. During the five-year contract period, successful enterprises need to provide a series of services including cloud storage, virtual appliance support, database and website support.

The idea of ​​turning to cloud services began in December 2011, and since then, the U.S. Department of Defense has dropped its use of its own data center. At that time, Teri Takai, director of the Information Technology Bureau of the Ministry of Defense, was responsible for this task. Officials in the United States believe that the move to cloud services can save large amounts of money for the Department of Defense and improve security through consolidation, compared to running own data centers, but this view is not fully supported.

Former US Air Force general Bernie Skoch believes that the result of importing data into the cloud is that the task of data protection becomes more complex. "The more data that is stored, the more difficult it is to secure."

In fact, in early 2011, Vivek Kundra, chief federal information officer at the U.S. federal government, plans to bring U.S. government data to the cloud. According to Vivek Kundra, the IT infrastructure in the United States has some problems such as low resource utilization, uneven load, repetition, and complicated management. Cloud computing can play an important role in solving these problems and improve government productivity.

Under Vivek Kundra's leadership, the U.S. government plans to allocate a quarter of its budget from 800 billion for information technology. In June 2011, Vivek Kundra's successor, Steven VanRoekel, continued to support the plan to move the U.S. government to the cloud platform. He believes that the transition to the cloud platform, the need for mobility, applications and services as a priority development direction.

Russia is also actively preparing to create a "national cloud" platform. Recently, the large Russian IT company NVision Group announced that it has completed the implementation plan for the national cloud and has reported the solution to the Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications.

Alexander Markdinov, manager of the NVision Group, said: "At present, the draft is under consideration by the Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications."

In April 2013, the company won the contract for the implementation of the project through bidding. The bidding companies also included Croc and HCT, which are well known in the Russian market. The implementation of this project will enable the government to reduce costs through the use of common computing and telecommunications infrastructure resources, and to achieve a systematic unity among government departments. Oleg Park, Russia's vice minister for communications and mass media, said the elimination of the "digital divide" between government agencies, the growing data capacity needs and the harmonization of equipment purchase prices are the main goals of "national cloud."

The Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Media said that the Ministry of Communication is currently working with the Commission of Experts on Acceptance on this project and plans to submit its comments in mid-July 2013. About the follow-up procurement process and other related items, will be based on acceptance.

NVision Group Corporation expressed its strong desire to implement the project. Alexander Martynov said the company has included all kinds of services and servers for the country in the company's strategic plan for development. Therefore, all subsequent bidding for the project related to the design, establishment and provision of ICT services by the company is very significant Interested, especially in building national clouds and providing cloud services projects, as the company itself has its own infrastructure and experience in R & D and application.

In fact, in February 2012, Putin had signed a resolution on the implementation of a unified ICT infrastructure by national institutions. According to the resolution, the implementation of the project requires the establishment of two pilot projects of a unified telecommunications infrastructure and a unified computing resource. The first pilot project will have to be designed and set up by November 1, 2013, be accessible to pilot areas by December 31, and begin using a unified telecommunications infrastructure in 2014. Unified computing resources The construction of the project is carried out in parallel with the telecom infrastructure. The involved pilot organizations need to provide the geographical location of the server and data backup. The pilot must be started by December 31, 2013.