The CalCloud Vendor Forum attracted an overflow crowd of 300+ attendees Monday at the lavish State Lottery’s auditorium. Billed ostensibly as the opportunity to provide an update on the State’s evolving cloud strategy, it was also clearly an attempt to assuage the angst of the assembled vendors large and small who fear being shut out of the state’s vast potential cloud spending over the next few years.

The primary takeaways were the opening of Software as a Service (SaaS) opportunities, now renamed the Vendor Hosted Subscription Services (VHSS) in five “lines of business”, and the release of an RFO for cloud assessment/migration assistance, both in multiple award bid opportunities, to be completed over the next three months. We were told to expect bid announcements within a matter of weeks.

Of course, IBM will retain its monopoly over Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) so come back in three years to potentially compete to be able to sell the State IaaS…

There were some interesting issues raised during the Q&A about the state’s criteria for the selection of the initial “lines of business” to be offered for SaaS VHSS bids, the “High Five” as we at TechLeader.TV have christened them: HR Tools, ID Management, Learning Management, Collaboration and CRM.

The sheer number of questions about state’s rationale for the selection of the initial High Five clearly indicated the disappointment which vendors felt with their cloud solutions outside those five areas. As Deputy State CIO Chris Cruz clearly pointed out, cloud solutions within the High Five categories would be the first considered for procurement. Once that is complete other lines of business would be considered. Timetable? Unspecified… If it’s anything like opening up Calnet3 to new categories, well, you may need the patience of Job.

One vendor clearly representing the sentiments of many in the room stated that she had already been working with three separate departments who were very interested in her company’s cloud solution, but with this new “High Five” priority scheme, she was out of business and had to go to the back of the line.

One questioner pointed out the potential conflict between the cloud Collaboration category and the Web Conferencing offering in CalNet3’s Category 2 – Network Based Web Conferencing. A good question that stumped the State Team. Another questioned the impact all this would have on active state IT procurements which could be affected by the new policy.

With a 90 days procurement and implementation schedule, and the clock running, the state has a few details to work out. Should make for an interesting autumn season…

Much more here at state CalCloud site: http://marketing.dts.ca.gov/calcloud/

P.S.

State CIO Carlos Ramos in closing remarks stated the regardless of the outcome of AB 522 which would institute a vendor performance scorecard, the Department of Technology would continuing to develop policies and metrics to implement such a program. Interesting, especially in light of formal vendor industry organizations coming out against AB 522 in a recent letter to Governor Brown, as reported in Techwire.