Audit of NASA’s Progress in Adopting Cloud-Computing Technologies

Office of Inspector General, Report No. IG-13-021, July 29, 2013: “NASA’s Progress in Adopting Cloud-Computing Technologies, July 29, 2013: “NASA was a pioneer in cloud computing having established its own private cloud- computing data center called Nebula in 2009 at the Ames Research Center (Ames). Nebula provided high-capacity computing and data storage services to NASA Centers, Mission Directorates, and external customers. In 2012, NASA shut down Nebula based on the results of a 5-month test that benchmarked Nebula’s capabilities against those of Amazon and Microsoft. The test found that public clouds were more reliable and cost effective and offered much greater computing capacity and better IT support services than Nebula… We found that weaknesses in NASA’s IT governance and risk management practices have impeded the Agency from fully realizing the benefits of cloud computing and potentially put NASA systems and data stored in the cloud at risk.”