The potential problems of adding mobile devices to a federal cloud system could outweigh their potential benefits. Dave Wennergren, vice president of Enterprise Technologies and Services at CACI and former assistant deputy chief management officer of the Defense Department, is writing about that intersection in his Top 3 for 2014.
1. The Nexus of Mobility and Cloud Computing. The power and peril of mobility/BYOD coupled with the promise of cloud computing could create a perfect storm as organizations grapple with fulfilling the pledge to provide the right person with the right information — from anywhere at any time. With a shift in approach to security, opportunities exist to both drive down costs through the effective use of cloud and mobile solutions as well as delivering more effective information sharing within and across organizations. The bringing together of mobile devices and cloud computing will also provide an opening to consider the potential disruptive force that BYOD could have on an organization — delighting the user, reducing the organization’s costs and creating a changing mindset where the employee gets to pick out not only the car they drive and the suit they wear to work, but the computing device they use too!
2. 3-D Printing and Distance Support – Revolutionizing Maintenance and the Supply Chain. Some organizations are already recognizing the potential to both reduce costs and implement solutions faster by replacing labor and travel intensive maintenance solutions with Web-based distance support solutions for logistics/maintenance operations. With the continuing maturity of 3-D printing (including the move to use other materials like metal in addition to plastic), distance support maintenance solutions could be augmented by on-site “part fabrication” to dramatically speed up turnaround times and dramatically reduce costs. Beam me up, Scotty.
3. Data is King. Large organizations (public and private) are sitting on treasure troves of data that are still not being leveraged effectively for business intelligence and knowledge sharing. Efforts to decouple data from legacy applications, tag data to help provide data-level security (opening the door for the alignment of identity management, attribute-based access control and data) as well as leveraging advances in analytical tools to array data in more meaningful ways will make the difference between mission success or failure.