GEOINT in the Cloud
GIF 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 8 (December)
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Cloud computing may be the wave of the future, but the geospatial community is still considering how to use it most effectively.
Editor’s note: Geospatial Intelligence Forum recently posed the following question to some of the leading companies in the GEOINT field: “What role will cloud computing play in the future of geospatial intelligence?” Following are their responses.
GEOINT Future
Cloud computing will put the production of
GEOINT products into an efficient and
automated assembly line process.
By Kevin L. Jackson
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Cloud computing is the future of geospatial intelligence. Through the processing, exploitation and dissemination process, GEOINT links data about a specific place to a specific time. The goal of this linkage is to create actionable information, and success is often a matter of having sufficient information technology resources. While cloud computing is not a revolution in technology, it does represent a step change in how IT resources are provisioned, accessed, manipulated and consumed. If leveraged properly, this new approach will greatly enhance our ability to create actionable GEOINT.
Cloud computing also represents an inevitable transition that some have likened to the Industrial Revolution. During that time, society developed from an environment where products were handmade in cottages to mass production on assembly lines powered by the steam engine. That transition represented a revolution not just to society, but also to the economy and to many other different domains.
What we’re seeing with cloud computing is the next step in the information revolution. The hand-built, hand-designed works of art that we call our IT infrastructures are being transitioned to modern, professional infrastructures composed of commodity components run in an automated fashion. We’re actually seeing IT infrastructure being put into an assembly line construct. In many ways the production of GEOINT products today resembles the cottage industries of the past. Like the steam engine, cloud computing will put the production of GEOINT products into an efficient and automated assembly line process.
Another key driver in this transition is our ever-increasing reliance on robotic vehicles. The sensors we employ on these vehicles produce hundreds of petabytes of raw digital data on a daily basis. Each and every bit of that data also has a geospatial coordinate. If we fail to leverage the automated information processing capabilities of cloud computing, we will lose the valuable GEOINT that data holds. The use of robotic forces is a function forcing us to use cloud computing techniques and technologies in the production of geospatial products. The growth of unstructured information will also play an important role in the future use of cloud computing for GEOINT. According to a 2009 IDC study of the “digital universe,” interactions between people via e-mail, messaging, social networks and similar media will grow by a factor of eight over the next four years.
The 2010 study concludes that “as much as 15 percent of the information in the Digital Universe in 2020 could be part of a cloud service—created in the cloud, delivered to the cloud, stored and manipulated in the cloud. Even more information could ‘pass through the cloud,’ that is be transported using a cloud services e-mail system or shared community, be stored temporarily on disk drives in the cloud, or be secured via a cloud service. By 2020, more than a third of all the information in the Digital Universe will either live in or pass through the cloud.”
Our ability to glean geospatial content and create actionable intelligence from these cloud-based interactions is crucial to our society’s ability to counter the evermore sophisticated terrorist threat. Once again, the automated information processing capabilities of cloud computing sheds light on the future of GEOINT.
In the end, cloud computing is not just hype. Cloud computing is a transition that we all have become comfortable with. Cloud is not a panacea for everything, so today’s challenge is to understand how to use cloud for the things it is good for—and to understand how and when not to use it for the things that we should not. ♦
Kevin L. Jackson is director, cloud services at NJVC.
Aligning with NGA’s Vision
GEOINT cloud computing strategy must include
a focus on the mission, an eye toward the
future, and a commitment to affordability.
by Dan Rice
In her speech at this year’s GEOINT Conference, NGA Director Letitia A. Long laid out a clear and compelling vision of providing “online, on-demand access to our GEOINT knowledge.” Ms. Long noted that she wanted NGA to “give our customers—from novice to expert—access to our content, our services, our expertise and to our support—and to tools that allow them to serve themselves.” How do we ensure that a GEOINT cloud computing strategy is fully aligned to that vision? From our perspective, we see three key areas that must be addressed: a focus on the mission, an eye toward the future, and a commitment to affordability.
Start with the Mission
Director Long’s vision centers on not only broadening the range of GEOINT services available to support the mission, but also changing the way diverse users interact with geospatial intelligence. That has two important consequences for a cloud strategy.
First, the cloud must be accessible to a wide range of stakeholders, from traditional GEOINT consumers to a new generation of troops, analysts, state and federal agencies, coalition partners, first responders, and international relief organizations. That means that the cloud architecture must balance security with far-reaching collaboration. A hybrid cloud approach—one that includes both a private, government-run cloud and a public Internet-based cloud— could be a preferred approach, but it is not without challenges.
In an era of increasing concerns over unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information, a comprehensive security approach including policies, architecture and cross-domain security services is of paramount importance. The cloud’s security capabilities must provide complete situational awareness of where critical information exists throughout the cloud, and who is accessing it.
The second important consequence has to do with the user experience. NGA envisions an “app store” model with online applications for both simple and sophisticated GEOINT tasks. That means a GEOINT cloud must be equipped to deliver software as a service, with potentially hundreds of applications and common services hosted on the cloud for all users to enjoy.
NGA’s current infrastructure service provider/application service provider model fully supports this approach. As we move into the cloud, it will be important to keep a common set of standards and an open architecture, so that any authorized user, in government or industry, who wants to write and publish applications can do so quickly and affordably. Because cloud computing is still evolving, it is important to establish a dialogue now around the right standards for the future.
Build for the Future
Implementing a cloud model will be a long-term commitment. Any cloud architecture must be scalable and flexible enough to handle the rapidly evolving demands of GEOINT users. The increasing thirst for full-motion video and the proliferation of new sensors are driving ever-increasing demands for storage space. The GEOINT cloud must be able to smartly manage an enormous volume of data and support automated implementation of defined data retention and archival policies. That means the GEOINT cloud must have a federated architecture that combines multiple databases under a single umbrella, and provide powerful single-point search and access capabilities for users. Optimize for Affordability
Clearly, in this new reality of limited resources, any new technology venture must make return on investment a top priority. The GEOINT cloud must be designed with efficiency and affordability in mind from the start. That means making measured trade-offs on capability vs. cost, and designing a phased roll-out that delivers cloud capability in stages while maximizing returns on the existing infrastructure investment. Lockheed Martin and its Cyber Security Alliance partners are working today to define what affordability means for elastic cloud computing, and to adapt commercial systems, approaches and governance policies for government use.
Turning Strategy into Action
We’re working with the Net-Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) to help develop a cloud roadmap for the geospatial community—one that is built on open standards, designed to grow and evolve, and created for affordability. NCOIC provides an outstanding forum to bring together the key players from government and industry in a collaborative forum to shape strategy, frameworks and future direction. This group is helping pave the way for a future that will deliver Ms. Long’s vision for online, on-demand GEOINT. We’re proud to be a part of this effort and look forward to collaborating with the entire geospatial community to realize the full power of the cloud. ♦
Dan Rice is vice president, spatial solutions for Lockheed Martin.
