fbpx Skip to content

Lessons Learned: VA Cloud Email Termination

Joey van Kuilenburg

Lessons Learned

According to a Federal Computer Week article by Frank Konkel, The Department of Veterans Affairs terminated its five-year, $36 million cloud computing contract for email and calendaring services with HP Enterprise Services. Citing a material change in the agency’s requirements, VA officials declined to elaborate on the requirement changes that were actually made. Although I have no personal connection or first hand knowledge of the specifics of this deployment, this failure was apparently caused by failure to first build and understand the business case for supporting the cloud transition.

“In November — after the agency announced its cloud deal with HP Enterprise Services – VA’s Deputy CIO for Architecture, Strategy and Design, Paul Tibbits, told an audience at 1105 Media’s Enterprise Architecture Conference that he questioned the cost-effectiveness of moving to the cloud.

Tibbits was not discussing this project in particular, but rather stressing the broader need for real use cases and hard-nosed business assessments. “It is not 100 percent clear that expenses go down if we jump into the cloud,” he said. “The revenue stream is up there in neon lights, we have got to figure out if that is going to save us money or not.”

Cloud computing is not about technology. It is primarily a change in the delivery and consumption of information technology services which can radically change an organizations business model. As highlighted in many expert guides, including my book “GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government“, the first step in any cloud transition strategy should be the identification, development and commitment to the cloud computing business model.

I also believe that there were at least two other contributing factors to this unfortunate action:

  • Failure to first establish and specify infrastructure security requirements for the software-as-a-service offering. Although FedRAMP is not mandatory until 2014, it provides an efficient and repeatable methodology for establishing a common cloud computing security baseline for all federal agencies
  • Failure to adequately address cultural and change management challenges associated with the cloud computing business model.  If the new business model wasn’t firmly understood and communicated throughout the organization with a focused change management process, success would be very difficult to achieve.

Connect

Kevin Jackson is a senior information technologist specializing in information technology solutions that meet critical Federal government operational requirements. Prior positions include VP & General Manager Cloud Services for NJVC, VP Federal Systems at Sirius Computer Solutions, Worldwide Sales Executive at IBM, Vice President Global IT Project Office at JP Morgan Chase, and CTO at SENTEL Corporation.

About the Author

Joey is a marketer who prefers to put in a bit of extra work to make an “ok” product or experience an amazing product or experience.

Never miss an interesting article

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

Please enter your name.
Please enter a valid email address.
Please check the required field.
Something went wrong. Please check your entries and try again.

Keep learning

Guest Blog Sequestration and the Cloud

Guest Blog: Sequestration and the Cloud

(This post was provided by Praveen Asthana, Chief Marketing Office of Gravitant, a cloud service brokerage and management company) Sequestration burst out of obscurity and entered...
Vladimir Baranek about Semantic Ecosystems and Cloud

Vladimir Baranek about Semantic Ecosystems and Cloud

Introduction to "Semantic Ecosystems and Cloud" research group at Cloud Credential Council http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yFtkQKSf_s
Government cloud deployment lessons learned

Government cloud deployment lessons learned

Government cloud deployment Connect Kevin Jackson is a senior information technologist specializing in information technology solutions that meet critical Federal government operational requirements. Prior positions include...
Scroll To Top
Tweet
Share
Share