The topic of cloud computing once again dominated much of the discussion at NASA’s IT Summit this year. Over 1,000 participants representing all NASA centers converged on the San Francisco Marriott from August 15 – 17 for two and a half days of educational sessions designed to better inform NASA’s IT community about activities within the Agency as well as larger trends in Information Technology.
How can NASA IT promote technological innovation and improve its approach to technology infusion within the Agency? Nebula’s Ray O’Brien was among the participants who helped answer that question by discussing real-life applications of cloud computing enabled by Nebula. The panel, moderated by OCIO’s Tsengdar Lee, explored the cloud’s ability to tackle mission-critical functions. Panelists agreed that cloud-based mission-critical functions are possible, depending on the mission. More architectural work still needs to be done for cloud to become a critical component for most mission-critical initiatives.
In addition to this panel, Tsengdar also spoke at a session presenting Nebula case studies to demonstrate how this platform has advanced science at NASA during its beta testing period. Tsengdar noted that cloud helps enable NASA scientists by facilitating access to resources in new ways. If they are constrained by local resource availability, Nebula can help them deliver real value quickly. A paper written by Ames CIO James Williams highlighting some of the case examples was released on August 16.
Nebula’s Ray O’Brien and William Eshagh co-presented at a session on “embracing open source.” Ray discussed how the project team was committed to being open in all aspects of Nebula’s development from the very beginning. The challenge the team faced early on was in convincing reviewers involved in the Agency software release process of the benefits in releasing “unfinished” software for iterative enhancement. The existing NASA software release policy and process did not specifically address this popular mode of development. The reviewers, says Ray, had a difficult time understanding why people would want to help NASA successfully develop and complete software. During his remarks, William described open source as “democracy in action at the code level.” His presentation is available at: http://open.nasa.gov/william/open-source-presentation.
Image Credit: NASA/Michael Porterfield August 2011.
