For the last six months, the U.S. military has been on the frontlines in the fight against the pandemic, providing necessary supplies and medical support across the country. Meanwhile, internally, the U.S. Defense Department has faced the threat of the virus with its warfighters. More than 55,000 Defense Department personnel have had the COVID-19 virus, and there have been 79 deaths—including one active-duty member, seven reservists or National Guard personnel and 71 dependents, retirees or family members, reported Lt. Gen. Ronald Place, USA, director, Defense Health Agency (DHA).
cloud computing
September 29, 2020
CDW Government LLC, Vernon Hills, Illinois, has been awarded a $10,236,014 firm-fixed-price delivery order contract for hardware and software components. The contract provides for Hyper Converged Infrastructure Cloud Based Training Range hardware and software components, the combination of which is called a “POD,” essential to conduct hands-on training for cyber weapon systems initial qualification. Work will be performed at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, and Hurlburt Field, Florida, and is expected to be complete by May 31, 2021. The award is the result of a competitive acquisition and three offers were received. Fiscal 2020 procurement funds in the amount of $10,236,000 will be obligated at the time of award.
October 1, 2020
Facing a pandemic and an aging legacy medical record system with limited data storage capacity at an on-premise data center in Charleston, South Carolina, the Enterprise Intelligence & Data Solutions (EIDS) team, sprang into action to complete a game-changing cloud migration project. The effort, called the Accelerated Migration Project, or AMP, moved petabytes of secondary healthcare data and related applications to the cloud. The project digitally transforms access to U.S. Defense Department medical records and offers better data analytics and more reliable information discovery, driving improved outcomes in patient care and business operations, experts say.
June 27, 2020
Accenture Federal Services LLC, Arlington, Virginia, has been awarded an $89,615,577 multiple-year firm-fixed-price contract action to sustain existing infrastructures and establish new cloud common infrastructure and services for Air Force enterprise resource planning: Air Force Integrated Personnel and Pay System, Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System, and maintenance, repair and overhaul initiative. Work will be performed in Arlington, Virginia; Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; Maxwell AFB-Gunter Annex, Alabama; Randolph AFB, Texas; and other locations as required. Work is expected to be completed by July 31, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and 28 offers were received.
July 17, 2020
Carahsoft Technology, Reston, Virginia, was awarded a $29,837,009 firm-fixed-price contract for movement of the logistics modernization program to the cloud. Bids were solicited via the internet with 11 received. Work will be performed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, with an estimated completion date of July 15, 2021. Fiscal 2020 other procurement (Army) funds in the amount of $29,837,009 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is the contracting activity (W52P1J-20-F-0419).
July 14, 2020
The U.S. Army’s near future will include an increased focus on adopting “zero trust” cybersecurity practices, better protecting its network endpoints and consolidating its plethora of cloud computing contracts, according to Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, the Army’s outgoing CIO/G-6. It also will likely include tightening defense budgets.
The general indicated during a keynote address for the Army’s virtual 2020 Signal Conference, which is hosted by AFCEA, that the 2021 fiscal year “is going to be all about driving on priorities.”
July 8, 2020
London-based UKCloud signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Crown Commercial Service to continue to deliver multi-cloud services to public sector organizations in the United Kingdom. The MOU will ensure that public sector organizations continue to have the benefit of choice and options of multi-cloud platforms alongside the more proprietary options available from the global cloud providers, the company stated in a release. The agreement also signals renewed support for the government’s Crown Campus, a secure datacenter operated as a joint venture between Ark Data Centers and the U.K. government.
June 2, 2020
Oracle America Inc., Reston, Virginia, has been awarded a $10,499,623 firm-fixed-price contract to provide software licenses, Oracle Service Cloud Hosting Services and maintenance in support of the myPers Customer Relationship Management software. The vendor will be required to provide 1,000 full software licenses for business process owners/administrators and 5,000 light software licenses for users requiring access to support customers. Work will be performed in Washington, D.C., and is expected to be completed May 31, 2021. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $5,249,812 are being obligated at the time of award.
May 22, 2020
Innovative Defense Technologies LLC,* Arlington, Virginia, is awarded a $22,506,572 modification (P00007) to previously awarded cost-plus-fixed-fee contract N00014-19-C-1054 for the Cloud to Edge Environment. This modification adds Options 5 through 10, and exercises Options 5, 9 and 10, which increases the contract value by $22,506,572. Under this modification, the contractor will continue work to deliver a secure development and operations (SecDevOps) environment enabling cloud-based collaborative development, simulation, testing and certification of evolving Navy software systems. Work will be performed in Arlington, Virginia (68%); Mount Laurel, New Jersey (23%); Washington, D.C. (6%); Rhode Island (2%); and various places below 1%.
May 1, 2020
Officials at one of the U.S. Army’s premier research and development centers are exploring the possibility of adding a so-called data fabric to the service’s original tactical cloud system. The concept could improve interoperability, aid the convergence of intelligence and operations information and allow service leaders to completely rethink future Army operations.
May 1, 2020
Digital structures are needed to protect government information and operations. A group participating in a National Institute of Standards of Technology challenge is offering a secure cloud-based platform that can improve the digital and actual health of a city and protect its information.
April 13, 2020
With more U.S. Defense Department personnel working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is experiencing a surge in demand for its prototypical technology developed under the Cloud-Based Internet Isolation program and is seeking to more quickly deliver the technology to larger numbers of users.
April 1, 2020
Security is among the single greatest concern government agencies have about moving their systems to the cloud. Although it offers significant benefits, cloud computing continues to raise questions about data and system protection. Regardless, the Office of Management and Budget via its Cloud Smart Strategy and the previous Cloud First policy mandates government agencies move to the cloud.
March 11, 2020
“There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think … it’s all about the information.” These lines are from the 1992 movie Sneakers, a film exploring the possibility of a decryption machine that could break any code, obliterating the ability to protect secrets. Nearly three decades later, the fictitious decoder still doesn’t exist, but the importance of data has grown exponentially.
February 14, 2020
The U.S. Army its transforming its Department of the Army’s Management Office-Cyber (DAMO-CY) to include a wider range of joint all-domain operations capabilities.
Col. Jay Chapman, USA, division chief, Mission Command, in the Army CIO/G-6 office, revealed the change at a February 13 luncheon event in Arlington, Virginia, hosted by the AFCEA Washington, D.C. chapter.
February 3, 2020
Cloud computing can quicken U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) efforts toward information dominance, but agencies must be measured and deliberate in the march toward the cloud.
January 1, 2020
The U.S. military relies heavily on companies to research, develop and manufacture innovative technologies to support missions. This hasn’t always been the case. A century ago, it was often the armed services that conceived and created the latest solutions. But when the world goes to war, it’s all hands on deck.
With unlimited resources, delving into fantastical technical solutions is easy. However, in the real world, the government and the private sector must solve real-life problems with realistic budgets. And today, both funds and available expertise are at a premium. Consequently, agencies must rely on companies they trust, and corporations only thrive when they invest in solutions likely to flourish in the future.
December 17, 2019
Between now and Valentine’s Day, the U.S. Defense Department will begin to build out its unclassified department-wide cloud platform, the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, known as JEDI. And approximately six months after that, DOD will stand up its secret cloud environment, followed later by the top secret cloud, all part of JEDI, reported Dana Deasy, Defense Department chief information officer, at the AFCEA Nova Chapter’s Air Force IT Day in Arlington, Va., last Thursday.
October 30, 2019
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Cloud Based Internet Isolation prototyping effort is already eliminating cyber threats every day, says Angela Landress, who manages the program commonly known as CBII.
The program uses a little technological sleight of hand to keep non-secure Internet browsing in the secure Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud rather than on the Department of Defense Information Network (DODIN). “What comes back from the cloud is actually just a video-like representation of the webpage. There’s nothing executable in it,” Landress explains.
September 26, 2019
The U.S. Cyber Command selected Applied Insight's subsidiary Stratus Solution to provide a cloud platform to the command, according to the company. Under the contract, the company will support the comand's ability to adopt commercial cloud services and migrate its activities into the cloud, by use of the company’s cloud platform-as-a-service called Altitude. The company will support the command in developing and implementing a secure, flexible and scalable cloud platform, and overseeing its migration to the cloud and the ongoing operation of its cloud environment as it scales, a company officiael stated. The company will provide architecture design, implementation and operation, security acceleration, and cloud governance.
