And the lines between service providers and service consumers keep getting blurrier. From an announcement just issued by Lockheed Martin:
Lockheed Martin now offers planes and clouds: C-141 Starlifter in action. Photo: Lockheed Martin
“Lockheed Martin today announced BlackCloud, a secure turnkey private cloud solution for government agencies designed to minimize risk while addressing compliance and mission requirements. BlackCloud integrates Lockheed Martin’s architecture with solutions from Cyber Security Alliance partners Cisco, NetApp, and VMware to offer secure multi-tenancy in the data center. The total solution provides end-to-end segmentation of a cloud computing environment while offering the economies of scale customers seek to reduce infrastructure costs.
Lockheed Martin’s BlackCloud architecture offers built-in security features that provide self-provisioning, compliance, and management of the cloud environment. These security features allow cloud subscribers to deploy applications more rapidly in a pre-integrated, trusted environment. As a result, BlackCloud can support thousands of tenants while providing secure end-to-end segmentation of customer computing environments from virtualization to server to network and storage environments. It is also uniquely adaptable to Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environments, where desktops and virtualized servers are utilized.
“The solution enables agencies to comply with security requirements by delivering a turnkey pre-integrated consensus audit guideline (CAG) compliant secure private cloud. It also accelerates development, deployment, innovation and performance while reducing risks and costs,” said Curt Aubley, VP, NexGen Cyber & Technology Centers, Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions.”
On many levels, of course, Lockheed Martin is a Big Technology (caps intended) company that already offers IT outsourcing, with aerospace as just one of its many components. Still, it is an example of many companies with well-developed IT infrastructures that are, in one way or another, also becoming cloud computing providers along with their core business. Excess capacity in the data center translates into opportunities to extend virtual services into private clouds and then beyond the firewall to partners and customers.
As with the case of Lockheed Martin, many organizations have done their architectural due diligence, perhaps learning along the way as part of their SOA efforts, and now have a value proposition to offer to organizations still struggling with IT. This value proposition is even coming from companies in businesses that have nothing to do with IT.
HT: Dave Linthicum
