Army Collaboration Across Platforms

Col. David DeVries, USA, special assistant to the commanding general, U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command/9th Signal Command, spoke at the chapter's March luncheon. He addressed his role as "trail boss" for the Army's Area Processing Center (APC) implementation. The Army's intranet will be built through the APC to allow collaboration across different platforms and domains. It will move the Army from having to defend more than 200 exit and entry points into the network within the continental United States to just six such points. According to Col. DeVries, e-mail servers will shrink from more than 10,000 to approximately 1,000. Army installation processing nodes will be located within each installation's directorate of information management to provide Army enterprise infrastructure there. This will enable a vision of net-centric warfare and operations and provide for information assurance. The APC implementation is designed to support the warfighter and the garrison.