My company has recently begun working on a project for the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO) to evaluate options for potentially migrating the GeoStor geospatial infrastructure to a cloud computing environment. If you are unfamiliar with GeoStor, it is the official geospatial platform for the State of Arkansas and is maintained by AGIO. I realize, as does AGIO, that “the cloud” has become a buzzword that has lost any meaningful context. So, for purposes of discussion, we’ll go with the NIST draft definition available here: http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/800-145/Draft-SP-800-145_cloud-definition.pdf.
For this effort, we are open to considering any service model but we have strict guidance that the only deployment model of interest is the public cloud model.
We are currently engaged in developing a detailed characterization of the current state of GeoStor (software, hardware, support, staffing), its user base and the products and services it provides. From there, we will derive the functional capabilities that are employed by GeoStor and would need to be supported in a new architecture.
At that point, we will distribute a survey so that interested vendors may assess the ability of their products to meet those requirements. We have been directed to “cast the net wide” so as not to miss out on potentially compelling solutions. After some discussion, we decided a post such as this may be a good way to kick off the process.
So, if you feel you have a product/service/solution that you would like considered and would like to receive this survey, please send the following information to me by e-mail (bill@zekiah.com):
- Your company name
- Name of the relevant point of contact within your company
- E-mail address of the point of contact
- Phone number of the point of contact
We realize that we may be opening the floodgates with this but we also feel, given the volatile nature of this space, that more information is better than less. That said, here are a few guidelines:
- Please do not attempt to contact me, my company or AGIO about this effort other than to send the information requested above. We are quite busy with characterization efforts and cannot take time away from that to answer questions. The nature of the GeoStor requirements will be evident from the survey.
- This post, the survey or any activity related to it should not be construed as a request for proposal or an intent to engage in a procurement or acquisition of any kind. This is strictly a market survey activity.
- My company is acting solely as a consultant and cannot represent AGIO in any official capacity. No communication from me or my company, including this post, should be considered a representation of the intent or positions of AGIO in any way.
