NASA Wants to Put Web Services in Agile-Like Cloud

NASA’s Office of the CIO is looking for contractors to improve management of its websites — primarily www.nasa.gov — and ancillary services including content management, search, and collaborative tools such as blogs and wikis.

The target environment for Web services is an “agile, cloud-based enterprise infrastructure” that provides the three cloud delivery models — infrastructure as a service, software as a service and platform as a service — according to a draft statement of work NASA issued Feb. 6. The Web infrastructure will service internal and public-facing applications and sites, using an interoperable, standards-based and secure environment, the document states.

Currently, each NASA center and its affiliated satellite facilities has its own Web infrastructure used internally for collaboration among the NASA workforce and external partners. And each mission publishes information to the public through its own auspices or websites. The different requirements for these services has resulted in a Web environment that is highly autonomous but inconsistent in terms of technology, management, security and information search capabilities, NASA officials said...