By Anne Altman, IBM<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that summer has started, we\u2019ll pay close attention to the weather\n as we plan our picnics and trips to the lake or beaches over the next \nthree months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But where, exactly, do those weather forecasts come from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) was created\n officially in 1970, but its roots go back more than 200 years. The \nagencies that came together to form NOAA represent some of the oldest \nfederal agencies. So much history, so much research, so much science, so\n much data and so little time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every day, NOAA gathers more than 20 terabytes from Doppler radar \nsystems, weather satellites, buoy networks and stations, tide gauges, \nreal-time weather stations, ships and aircraft. That equates to creating\n more than twice the data contained in the United States Library of \nCongress \u2014 every day. Yes, data is our greatest natural resource, but \nlike any natural resource, its power is only useful if it can be \nrefined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a bold move in April, NOAA announced a Cooperative Research & \nDevelopment Agreement (CRADA) with IBM and others to help bring NOAA\u2019s \ndata to the cloud where it can be refined by developers, scientists, \nresearchers and others, spurring new capabilities and applications. This\n news came just after my company\u2019s groundbreaking strategic alliance was\n announced with The Weather Company to integrate real-time weather \ninsights into business to improve operational performance and \ndecision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By sharing NOAA data in the cloud, our ecosystem of partners, \ndevelopers and customers will have the means to not only apply \nanalytics, but also to develop new apps with our digital innovation \nplatform Bluemix to garner even greater value from the information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Joshua New, a policy analyst at the Center for Data \nInnovation, an agency such as NOAA can rely on the cloud \u201cto help reduce\n the bottleneck effect that limited government IT infrastructure can \nhave on organizations and businesses that rely on government data.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The faster that my company, and in turn, The Weather Company and \nothers can access that data, the more value that can be generated for \nthose with a need to consume it and act upon it. The CRADA model allows \nNOAA to explore what works from a cloud perspective before making a \ndeeper commitment. The participants can work on solutions iteratively, \nby starting with a few large data sets, which allow us and others to \ndetermine how the data gets out into the public domain.
\nCloud is the logical choice for NOAA because of its elastic nature to \nscale up and down, and to provide tremendous efficiencies. The cloud can\n help unlock the abundance of data in a traditional IT environment where\n only a small fraction is presently available for public consumption. \nFor many organizations with long histories, moving to the cloud can be \ntransformative, because they don\u2019t have the luxury or the simplicity \nthat \u201cborn on the cloud\u201d entities have by starting from scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Obama Administration\u2019s proposed fiscal 2016 budget estimates that\n about $7.3 billion will be spent on cloud computing. For that reason, \nfederal agencies are focused on solutions that are secure, reliable and \nintegrate easily with existing systems. That\u2019s a perfect recipe for \nhybrid cloud solutions, which can connect multiple cloud environments or\n connect a cloud environment with an existing IT system. A hybrid cloud \nmay prove to be the best option for NOAA to weather all the \npossibilities of making real-time analysis of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n