cloud infrastructure, infrastructure clouds

Session Date and Time: Day 2, March 24, 11:15am EST (8.15AM West Coast) (45min)
Keywords: Cloud, security, virtualization, governance, collaboration.
Authors: Jirka Danek, Federal Government of Canada and Dan Murphy, DJM Systems.
Abstract: Mr. Danek is the Chief Technical Officer of the organization responsible for shared IT Services. His presentation outlines the current position of the Canadian Federal Governments migration to a cloud infrastructure.

The Canadian Government is composed of some 144 departments with over 120,000 Wintel and Unix servers. Currently there are over 100 data centers nationally with much duplication.

Initial steps include the implementation of a cross departmental governance structure, virtualization standards and the enabling components of a high speed shared network infrastructure. The presentation includes the terms and definitions of the various deployment models as well as some discussion on the security concerns and proposed architectures. In addition, Mr. Danek is deploying a pull based vision based on signficant value based cloud applications such as collaboration and directory services include centralized authorization and authentications services.

Jirka Danek
Director General
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Jirka Danek was appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for IT Services Branch in June 2008. As CTO, he is responsible for providing technical vision and innovation in identifying and evaluating new technologies that could be used within government. Jirka strategically selects and applies new technology to further develop an IT evolution plan for common shared services. In doing so, he supports the business agenda of the IT Shared Services model. In his role, he also ensures that best practices in government processes are compliant with TBS direction for policies, standards, shared solutions and technology principles.

In Jirka's previous role as Director General, Product Management, ITSB he was responsible for developing and delivering an IT Shared Services product management portfolio for the Government of Canada's IT infrastructure strategy. Jirka has a deep understanding of IT management from the private and public sector. Following a ten-year public sector career with the New Brunswick and Quebec provincial Government's IT Departments, Jirka joined CGI Group in Québec City as one of the original members of the firm. He was partner and VP with CGI in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Cleveland (Ohio), where he established a reputation for helping client IT organizations transform to achieve corporate goals. Following his career with CGI, Jirka joined Revenue Canada Customs & Excise as DG of the IT Directorate where he was responsible for the development and implementation of the National IT infrastructure required for the GST, Customs, and Free Trade Agreement Programs.

Jirka is a Certified Management Consultant, and holds a B Sc. from the University of New Brunswick.

-- Cloud Computing Conference - Cloud Slam 2010.

Keywords: private clouds, internal clouds, hypervisor, cloud computing, infrastructure clouds
Authors: Sheng Liang, VMOps.
Abstract: The benefits of private clouds are fairly well documented, but at the end of the day, the best way to gauge the value of this computing model within an enterprise is to jump in and start small. However, starting small doesn’t mean sacrificing functionality like elasticity, self service, programmatic access, and automation. In this session, technology visionary and creator of the Java Virtual Machine at Sun Microsystems, Sheng Liang, will discuss how to set-up a small private cloud using commodity infrastructure. Mr. Sheng will present the challenges and potential pitfalls associated with rolling your own cloud. He will explain how to evaluate cloud software platforms, and select the right servers, storage, hypervisor, and networking infrastructure.

-- Cloud Computing Conference - Cloud Slam 2010.