July 2014 Federal Cloud Computing Summit Summary

The latest installment of the Federal Cloud Computing Summit took place on July 8-9, 2014. The Summit began on July 8 with the MITRE-Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) Collaboration Sessions that allowed industry, academic, government, and MITRE representatives the opportunity to collaborate and discuss the government’s challenge areas in cloud computing. The goal of the collaboration sessions is to create a forum for an exchange of ideas and a way to create recommendations to further the adoption and advancement of cloud computing within the Government.

The MITRE Corporation is a not-for-profit company that operates multiple federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs). ATARC is a non-profit organization that leverages academia to bridge between Government and Corporate participation. MITRE worked in partnership with the ATARC to host these collaborative sessions as part of the Federal Cloud Computing Summit. The invited collaboration session participants across Government, Industry and Academia worked together to address challenge areas in cloud computing, as well as identify courses of action to be taken to enable government and industry collaboration with academic institutions. Academic participants used the discussions as a way to help guide research efforts, curricula development, and to help produce hire-ready graduates to advance the state of cloud computing in the government.

Several recommendations were made as a result of the exchange of ideas in the collaboration sessions. This white paper summarizes these results, as well as identifies recommendations for government and academia while identifying orthogonal points between challenge areas. It also recommends an increase in cross-government and academic collaboration to share best practices and address cross-cutting challenges.​