Teecht. Dod Officials Highlight Component Division Of Cloud Infrastructure Inwards Supporting Warfighters

By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity

ARLINGTON, Va., March 14, 2018 — The Defense Department is seeking an enterprisewide cloud infrastructure to ensure warfighters possess got access to real-time, mission-critical data, DoD officials said March seven at an manufacture twenty-four threescore minutes current for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud acquisition.

Having the departmentwide cloud infrastructure could hateful the divergence betwixt mission success or mission failure for warfighters, the speakers stressed.

“This programme is genuinely most increasing the lethality of our subdivision together with providing the best resources to our men together with women inward uniform,” DoD Chief Management Officer John H. Gibson II said. “JEDI Cloud is only i contract together with constituent of a much larger strategy for overall [information technology] efforts.”

Global challenges to the state of war machine remain, he said, adding that the subdivision must consider pregnant reforms to best equip the state of war machine to come across mission requirements.

“Leveraging the commercial cloud is i IT surface area that nosotros believe volition accomplish operational, fiscal together with safety benefits of which the JEDI Cloud contract is a nifty example,” Gibson said.

The Industry Day event, held at the Sheraton Pentagon City close the Pentagon, was opened upwardly to the public. Hundreds of people, including representatives from industry, academia together with government, attended.

Changing the Way DoD Does Business

“We must encompass change,” Ellen M. Lord, the undersecretary of defense forcefulness acquisition together with sustainment, said. “If nosotros leverage commercially available cloud solutions, nosotros volition possess got the foundational engineering scientific discipline inward house that nosotros withdraw to deliver ameliorate software to our warfighters faster, alongside ameliorate security, together with at a lower cost, together with that software volition last easier to maintain,” she said.

Lord said the first is the sort of excogitation the defense forcefulness acquisition Blue Planet needs.

“If nosotros travel along doing line concern the same erstwhile way, our software volition last outdated, it volition toll far to a greater extent than than it needs to, nosotros won't last able to attract the best software talent, together with we'll lose our technological edge,” she said. “Change is uncomfortable, but equally I order our squad all the time, nosotros withdraw to larn comfortable alongside beingness uncomfortable.”

Building a Better Now

The Defense Digital Service is leading the JEDI Cloud acquisition together with has worked throughout the Defense Department to stand upwardly up the JEDI Program Office inside the Office of the Chief Management Officer to transform the agency DoD buys, builds together with makes decisions most technology. Speaking at Industry Day, DDS Director Chris Lynch emphasized that JEDI Cloud is additive -- it is a forcefulness multiplier rather than an terminate production solution, he explained, together with is critical to DoD’s efforts to accelerate adoption of cloud infrastructure together with platform services.

Embracing a commercial solution volition allow DoD to nowadays at the speed of relevancy, improve lethality, together with both position together with come across the evolving requirements of the articulation warfighter, Lynch noted.

“We larn to possess got wages of excogitation that has non however come upwardly to us,” Lynch said. “We larn to possess got wages of the excogitation that nosotros aspire to use.”

Lynch underscored the importance of operating at speed inward warfighting environments, where troops depend on information for making life together with expiry decisions.

Fighting together with Winning the Nation’s Wars

Air Force Brig. Gen. David A. Krumm, the Joint Staff’s deputy managing director for requirements, reminded attendees that the JEDI Cloud lawsuit was held only across from Arlington National Cemetery. He encouraged them to walk the hills of the cemetery together with become through the rows of graves, noting they volition notice that around of those buried at that topographic point are immature service members.

“If nosotros do this right, if nosotros do this together, y'all together with your squad volition last responsible for making around of those terminate dates non equally unopen [to the birthdates],” he said. “You’ll last responsible for a few fewer tombstones upwardly there.”

More service members would become far dwelling because they had the critical information when they needed it inward the battlespace, Krumm said. He described the cloud project equally “not an IT contract,” but a agency to modify how the subdivision does business. “We're going to modify the agency that this nation, its soldiers, its sailors, its Marines together with its airmen cope together with win our nation's wars,” he said.

For the by quarter century, the subdivision has had a arrangement inward which information is secure, but likewise isolated together with inaccessible to other systems, the full general noted.

“We withdraw to possess got your commercial solutions together with nosotros withdraw to integrate them into the military,” he said. “We withdraw to seat them on a global scale inward both the unclassified together with classified environment. That information has to last available to the warfare on the tactical edge, non only the headquarters.”

Global Enterprise, Millions of Users

Essye B. Miller, DoD’s acting principal information officer, noted that the Defense Department right away has 3.4 meg users, most 4 meg endpoint devices, to a greater extent than than 1,700 information centers, together with around 500 unlike cloud initiatives. She stressed the safety facial expression of the commercial solution for the cloud infrastructure.

“It is less most protecting the boundary of the network together with the physical limitations,” she said. “It's to a greater extent than most protecting the information together with exposing it to the individuals together with functions who withdraw it inward a real-time basis.”

The project, she said, is most capturing best practices of manufacture that tin aid the department.

“Cloud computing enables the subdivision to consolidate infrastructure, leverage IT commodity functions, eliminate functional redundancies, piece improving continuity of operations,” she said.

In September, DoD established the Cloud Executive Steering Group to prepare together with execute a strategy to accelerate the adoption of cloud architectures together with cloud services alongside a focus on commercial solutions.

The subdivision is using a tailored acquisition procedure to larn a modern corporation cloud services solution that tin back upwardly unclassified, hole-and-corner together with top hole-and-corner requirements. The planned contracting activity volition last a sum together with opened upwardly competition.