The Canada Cloud

Roadmap Business plan for a Canadian Digital Economy

CanadaCloud.biz Version 1.00

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Contents

Executive Overview ........................................................................................................................ 3

The Canada Cloud Roadmap - Growing an Innovation Portfolio .............................................. 3

Procurement Commercialization - Building the Roadmap ............................................................. 4

Government as Early Adopter .................................................................................................... 4

Forward Commitment Procurement ....................................................................................... 5

A Taxonomy for Cloud Innovation............................................................................................. 5

Best Practice Innovation Programs ................................................................................................. 6

Enterprise Cloud Computing ...................................................................................................... 6

Unified Cloud Collaboration....................................................................................................... 6

Cloud Identity Ecosystem ........................................................................................................... 7

Cloud Privacy By Design............................................................................................................ 7

Green Data Centre....................................................................................................................... 7

Cloud Service Brokers ................................................................................................................ 7

EDaaS: E-Discovery as a Service ............................................................................................... 8

Semantic Dataweb - .................................................................................................................... 8

Next generation Internet ............................................................................................................. 8

Accelerating small business start-ups ............................................................................................. 9

The Triple Helix Formula for accelerating innovation ............................................................... 9

Innovation 2.0 – Enhancing Multi-Factor Productivity ............................................................ 10

Virtual Innovation - Service Broker Accelerators ................................................................ 10

Cloud Applications – Sales Acceleration Program ....................................................................... 11

SaaS Entrepreneur ..................................................................................................................... 11

Rapid Prototyping ..................................................................................................................... 12

Accelerator Workshops ............................................................................................................. 12

Solution Accelerators ................................................................................................................ 12

Next Steps – Become a Roadmapper ............................................................................................ 12

About the Authors ......................................................................................................................... 13

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Executive Overview The goal of the Canada Cloud Network

(CCN) is to establish Canada as a world

leader in the field of Cloud Computing.

There is a plentitude of the required

innovations but there is no national level

framework to leverage them towards this

goal.

Specifically the CCN will define an R&D

agenda for Cloud Computing, and

furthermore within this scope a number of

key specialist areas where efforts can be

concentrated.

This will include Big Data, AI, Cloud Identity and in particular Cloud Transformation –

The overall modernization process the trend represents, where corporations will undertake

the complex work of migrating legacy applications to Cloud environments.

In the same fashion the transition to the railway-based economy recruited and trained

thousands of workers so the transition to the Cloud-based economy will create the same

demand for an equally wide and deep range of new skills, training and services.

The Canada Cloud Roadmap - Growing an Innovation

Portfolio

With expertise in key areas like Cloud Privacy, Green Data Centres and a clear distinction

from the USA Patriot Act, as well as a general Canadian brand keenly associated with

trustworthiness, Canada is uniquely positioned to exploit this trend.

To achieve this the CCN will lead development of a ‘Technology Roadmap’, the process

defined by Industry Canada as best practices for building a single collaboration across

government, academia and industry where they share a common goal like this.

This defines a framework for meshing together these typically separate organizations and

drives a collective program that helps each benefit their own local requirements. For

example it can define a Technology Transfer strategy for universities and underpin

industry cluster initiatives for government.

This body of knowledge will be used to build a product portfolio that underpins and

realizes these strategic goals.

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Procurement Commercialization - Building the

Roadmap The CCN will leverage other innovation best practices to accelerate and achieve these

goals, most notably ‘Procurement Commercialization’ (PC).

It’s a simple but very powerful dynamic that establishes a link between government

procurement and local innovation, where government RFPs (Requests for Proposal) are

dissected and their requirements are used directly as the materials for “PRDs” – Product

Requirement Documents. These provide the starting point for new product innovation.

The primary objective of our program is to establish a feedback loop between real-world

client requirements and our expertise production process, to develop solutions and services

directly in-line with client needs. For example we’re analyzing RFPs from the MERX

procurement portal and feeding the requirements from these into the Roadmap process.

Government as Early Adopter

The Roadmapping best practice document states that the Roadmap is produced through a

process of gathering “market pull” requirements, which means ‘the technological

innovations needed if companies are to serve anticipated future markets’, meaning that

these requirements from key buyers like the public sector can be directly used as stimulus

for new innovation.

This is a consistent theme across all of the reports. For example in the Innovation Canada:

A Call To Action report led by OpenText’s Tom Jenkins, they call for:

“Recommendation 3: To this end, public sector procurement and related

programming should be used to create opportunity and demand for leading-edge

goods, services and technologies from Canadian suppliers.

3.1 Innovation as an objective – Make the encouragement of innovation in the

Canadian economy a stated objective of procurement policies and programs.”

The Government themselves also describe the need for the same catalyst process. In their

own Digital Advantage white paper, they identify:

“Governments can play an important role in promoting private sector innovation

and driving ICT uptake by acting as model users and leading by example, by

being an early adopter and demanding purchaser of emerging and next

generation technologies like Green IT and Cloud computing.”

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Government also can be a catalyst by using a similar co-creation and market-test approach

to develop and deliver new public services. The procurement function allows government

to play a prominent role in local and national testing of new technologies, and helps

smooth the entire innovation chain—from research to go-to-market. Taken together, these

stimuli allow start-ups to create more sophisticated products based on trial and error at the

local level.

Forward Commitment Procurement

This approach of government stimulating new innovation through acting as an early

adopter is called ‘Forward Commitment Procurement’, a technique coined by the UK

Government, where they have used it as a method for simulating sectors like the ‘Green

Economy’.

This 15-page presentation explains more, which in short can be summarized by their title

of ‘Innovation Procurement’: How do you “buy innovation”?

A Taxonomy for Cloud Innovation

Most notably we’re using the Cloud Computing Roadmap for the Canadian Federal

Government as a repeatable framework for the core objective of this initiative – Business

Transformation through Cloud computing.

In this 18-page PPT the Canadian Federal Government provide a blueprint for their

planned transformation strategy. This has been analyzed and used to define the services

and indexing taxonomy structure for this program.

It is an invaluable guide for Cloud entrepreneurs because it organizes the Canadian

Governments plans for the Cloud technologies they will procure, across a matrix of their

short and long term horizons, and then also decomposes the overall architecture into a

number of different sub-components.

In short it provides a taxonomy of the technology segments that make up the overall Cloud

picture, a blueprint that provides a keystone for our Roadmap including:

o Private and Community Clouds

o Network and security architectures

o Common Messaging Platform

o Shared applications

o Cloud Provisioning Services

These define specific segments within the Cloud industry that present opportunity for new

products and technologies.

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Best Practice Innovation Programs Given the early stage of the Cloud market some of these areas are still very embryonic,

meaning they are the fertile areas ideal for new product innovations.

The goal of the CCN is to build a community that builds the required cross-industry

collaboration required to engineer new market-ready solutions in these areas, such as:

Government R&D agencies, in particular NIST and NRC

Open standards groups, such as OASIS and the DMTF

Industry-specific forums such as the TMF, ODCA

Businesses, such as Microsoft and Cisco

This group represents the R&D support infrastructure, the core technology innovations and

the commercial routes to market.

Enterprise Cloud Computing

A headline program is ‘Enterprise Cloud Computing’, referring to the overall technical

designs required for a large organization, like the Canadian Federal Government, to wholly

adopted Cloud Computing.

Slide 12 of the presentation highlights that the technical architecture at the heart of the

benefits of Cloud computing are ‘Community Clouds’- Multi-tenancy applications

jointly shared by a number of collaborating agencies, providing the opportunity to generate

cost-savings through consolidation.

The government operates numerous sofware applications like OpenText, SAP, Oracle and

Microsoft, for line of business systems like Pay and Pensions, and a Community Cloud

enables these to be offered on a “Private SaaS” (Software as a Service) basis to multiple

agencies.

It also facilitates ‘Mobile Integration’ and their plans include moving to a Community

Cloud model for a Common Messaging Platform.

Unified Cloud Collaboration

Ultimately the goal is to achieve “Government 2.0″, using social media and other tools to

better engage the public into government process and re-invent new ‘collective

intelligence’ approaches to business workflow. This is known as Open Government.

Specifically in Canada, on September 1st, 2010, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner

announced the Open Government resolution for Canada. This dramatically changes the

expectations for how government agencies proactively share information with the public.

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This can be accomplished through ‘Unified Cloud Collaboration’, utilizing Unified

Communications and Collaboration software internally and externally to empower these

processes.

Cloud Identity Ecosystem

In the Roadmap presentation the requirement for this is identified on slide 15,

through “GEDS2.0″, a software framework that will enable an environment of common

functionality for credentials, directory synchronization and single sign-on across multiple

internal and Cloud apps.

Key to this is ‘Cloud Identity’ – a single username/password identifier that works

seamlessly across SaaS as well as internal applications. The foundation of these ‘Federated

Identity’ systems is the OASIS protocol SAML, building out what NSTIC call the ‘Identity

Ecosystem’. With the right surrounding certification systems these make possible new

Cloud service innovations, like Verizon`s Identity-as-a-service.

Cloud Privacy By Design

Cloud Privacy refers to the combination of technologies and legal frameworks to ensure

privacy of personal information held in Cloud systems, and a ‘Cloud Privacy-by-Design’

process can then be used to identify the local legislated privacy requirements of

information.

Tools for designing these types of privacy controls have been developed by global privacy

experts, such as Ann Cavoukian, the current Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, who

provides tools to design and build these federated privacy systems.

Green Data Centre

The business benefits can be further maximized through consolidation cost-savings and

environmental improvements.

A green data center is where the mechanical, lighting, electrical and computer systems are

designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. Cloud

computing can greatly reduce enterprise IT complexity and also modernizing the legacy

estate of mainframes into a greatly reduced data-centre footprint, offering a positive

response to Climate Change.

Cloud Service Brokers

The Roadmap presentation stipulates requirements for what is known as ‘Cloud Service

Brokerage’. Similarly in the USA the GSA has recently published an RFI to learn more

about this field. These are middle-men organizations who serve to aggregate supplier

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services and offer standardized service catalogues, with automated procurement

implemented across them to deliver improved efficiencies.

In this area OASIS is pioneering new standards like TOSCA, which will underpin this type

of automation.

EDaaS: E-Discovery as a Service

Governments have stringent record-keeping requirements, and in recent NIST Cloud

documentation they described the business use case for E-Discovery, and within that the

need for this same type of inter-operation at the content level too, highlighting OASIS

CMIS as one potential candidate for achieving this.

These standards provide for the main foundations that will enable the next wave of Cloud

adoption innovations, and so they will act as a real catalyst to accelerating what is already a

tidal wave of growing demand for Cloud services.

Semantic Dataweb

What`s particularly important about the role of OASIS is how these trends are not just

about virtualizing IT and sending them over to outsourcing providers, but also the broader

role of the Cloud as a ‘dataweb”, a universal data sharing environment that enables better

and more holistic data integration for smarter web services.

For example OASIS covers a privacy model and also XDI, a data linking protocol for

implementing these privacy policies across multiple Cloud and also in-house systems, to

facilitate this environment.

This connectivity between applications as much as the hosting of them will be the key

catalyst events for major adoption of new Cloud services and so they are key to the

surrounding economic innovation they will drive. The combination will enable massive

leaps in key growth markets like E-Health and enable the underlying business ventures to

flourish.

Next generation Internet

As the US Govt is also advising on adoption of other next generation technologies, like this

IPv6 deployment guidance, so we’re seeing is an overall investment program for the next

generation Internet, a growth surge that will make the dot com boom pale in comparison,

and will overlay a second set of IP on what to date has been “Internet 1.0″.

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Accelerating small business start-ups The goal of the CCN is to help start new start-up ventures, through enabling more

innovation between the ‘triple helix’ of collaboration between academia, business and

government.

The Triple Helix Formula for accelerating innovation

Not only does Cloud Computing represent a growth industry, but also the technology itself

can be used to accelerate innovation. It can enhance the national capacity for venture

innovation.

This is especially important to the Canadian challenge, where a key factor of the

innovation gap is a low "BERD intensity factor", meaning Business Expenditures on

Research and Development, and demonstrated through a low annual growth rate of labor

productivity, 0.6% vs. an average of 1.5% for other OECD members.

In short Canadian businesses aren’t inventing and commercializing enough, and also this is

compounded by a weaker system for encouraging the effect through the universities. The

consultation paper highlights:

"the balance of evidence suggests that many Canadian universities are first-rate

scientific institutions. But in the context of the knowledge-based economy, it is not

considered sufficient for a country's universities to produce groundbreaking

scientific research in isolation. A growing body of research suggests that effective

links between the three principle innovation funding/performing sectors of

business, education and government are an important contributor to a successful

national innovation system."

The lack of this integration between academia R&D and business innovation is confirmed

through the fact "the OECD placed Canada near the bottom of OECD countries in terms of

the proportion of businesses collaborating with universities for R&D."

Cisco agrees, and identifies the role that new technologies can play in addressing the issue.

In their Innovation Hub white paper they describe:

"with the goal of a new level of excellence, clusters are taking advantage of the

connection capacities of the "Triple Helix" model, which combines government,

business and public research in the development of knowledge-based innovation

systems. Consequently, firms within the innovation hub have a higher ratio of

R&D to sales, more effectively transferring R&D into commercialization.”

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Innovation 2.0 – Enhancing Multi-Factor Productivity

The 'secret sauce' that is essential to igniting growth in this area is what Cisco describes as

'MultiFactor Productivity' (MFP).

This basically refers to the fact that the main core ingredients into an innovation model are

labor input (people doing stuff), capital input (money) and MFP - How effectively they are

combined.

"Economic analysis has shown that total factor

productivity—the know-how, processes, and technologies

with which capital is utilized—rather than capital

intensity is the primary determinant of countries’

productivity and economic growth."

This provides a cornerstone of the Cisco Innovation Hub model,

where they describe the use of online social networks and virtual collaboration tools being

key to enabling the type of cross-enterprise collaboration needed for the Triple Helix.

"Technology should be harnessed to enable growth in all industry sectors (as

opposed to focusing solely on hubs that rely on technological innovation). The

degree of availability, quality, and efficiency of web infrastructure supporting the

hub will determine the strength of these digital communities and the pace of

innovation."

Implementing a new model that fosters cocreation, coproduction, mutual evaluation, and

cross-industry investments will require significant cultural changes, greater trust in

individuals, and the acceptance of a new novel form of collaboration. At different levels

and without predefined hierarchy, these community-driven hubs will thrive by involving

virtual residents in a global dialogue.

Virtual Innovation - Service Broker Accelerators

The goal of the CCN is to pioneer a working demonstration of this ‘virtual innovation’,

achieved through tools such as a social media portal at CanadaCloud.net, with supporting

social communities on Linkedin that help organize the Innovation Programs described in

the previous section. For example Cloud Privacy By Design.

Furthermore the CCN will identify the role Cloud can play in accelerating SME growth.

For example as described here other countries like the UK are pioneering the use of Cloud

to level this playing field, and the CCN will repeat this same effect through implementation

of a Canadian Cloud Service Broker, with the TSB designing the standards and

technologies required to achieve this.

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Cloud Applications – Sales Acceleration

Program The ultimate purpose of these Innovation Programs is to output new products –

Specifically new Cloud Applications.

The CCN will help start and grow new business ventures that sell ‘through’ channels of

Cloud Providers, firms that host, sell and deliver Cloud Applications, such as Rackspace,

Amazon and Microsoft.

To maximize impact and business opportunities, the CCN will focus on core topics of:

Privacy and security – Canada’s unique strengths in Cloud Privacy and Security

Cloud sourcing and migration – Best practices in migrating IT to Cloud providers

SaaS and hosting – A specialist focus on `Secure SaaS`-enablement.

The CCN will support entrepreneurs with a Cloud Venture Business Planning process:

SaaS Entrepreneur

Working with Softletter the CCN will utilize the ‘SaaS Entrepreneur’ materials as a

baseline, providing foundational business model planning dynamics:

Key measurement metrics such as ARPU and Cost of Acquisition of new

customers, modelled into a template spreadsheet

Business model success drivers, like ‘Freemium’ users for initial customer capture

Organizational best practices for sales team structures & professional services

Major cost base elements, like hosting etc.

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Rapid Prototyping

Rapid SaaS Venture Prototyping will then document a detailed cost and project plan for

delivering the SaaS application, defined across a development lifecycle of Alpha, Beta and

Release stages. This process provides the core technical design of SaaS architecture.

Accelerator Workshops

The CCN will also organize Accelerator Workshops to help entrepreneurs engage with

external markets and key stakeholder groups to then complete these template business plan

materials. This will include tailoring plans for application to relevant government support

programs, such as:

Ontario VentureStart

Federal CICP

Solution Accelerators

The CCN will then work with entrepreneurs to help fast-track their product to market,

through building their ventures into ‘Solution Accelerators’. These combine innovations

with partner capabilities for solutions to overall industry scenario needs, such as:

Cloud VDI for Healthcare

Municipality as a Service

Next Steps – Become a Roadmapper As per the best practices recommended by Industry Canada for the development of

roadmaps, the Canada Cloud Roadmap is intended as an industry-wide team effort.

End-users: Input your technical requirements to shape the Roadmap

Vendor partners: Profile your technology solutions into the program

Get started by joining and participating in our Linkedin group.

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About the Authors

Neil McEvoy – Founder and CEO, Cloud Best Practices Network

Neil McEvoy is a Cloud Computing entrepreneur who has been pioneering new

innovations in this industry for twenty years.

Aged 28 he launched his first company, one of the Europe’s first ASPs (Application

Service Providers), a joint venture with Microsoft to bring hosted CMS systems to small

businesses and funded by the elite of the UK Internet entrepreneur market.

Since then Neil has repeatedly brought new Cloud products and managed services to

market across a spectrum of different industries and product segments, both in Europe and

now more in North America.

Most recently Neil has founded and launched the Cloud Best Practices Network in

Toronto, with plans to expand throughout the nation, the USA, Europe and Asia.

Connect on Linkedin here, and email: neil.mcevoy@l5consulting.net