WASHINGTON — U.S. Army cloud computing experts are increasingly talking with Air Force and Navy colleagues as the Department of Defense craves access to corporate and field data of battle, even in the most remote places.
The exchange between services, about disparate databases and systems, best practices and integration, is “really matured” at this point, according to Gregg Judge, acting director of the Cloud Management Agency. company of the army, or ECMA.
“We are absolutely committed to them. We meet the Air Force a lot. We are meeting more and more with the Navy and obviously our DOD partners,” Judge said at a Jan. 13 event hosted by C4ISRNET. “We shared a lot of lessons learned with each other. We are talking more and more about planning with our sister services.
ECMA, a relatively new organization, oversees the military’s cloud efforts. Its goals include zero-trust cybersecurity, modern software development, and improved data flow.
Growing dialogues between the Army, Air Force and Navy come as the Department of Defense attempts to achieve joint command and control of all domains, a vision of rapid information sharing and accurate on land, air, sea, space and cyber.
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The cloud is the keystone of such an ambitious build, according to Judge, who foresees a future “of fairly tight integration with our Navy and Air Force counterparts and their cloud infrastructures.” The military sees migration to the cloud and its widespread and secure use as fundamental to a broader modernization of its networks, computers and collaboration.
“The right data at the point of need can actually drive the right kind of effects that we want to execute militarily,” Judge said, adding that the cloud, in general, is “how we’re going to get data to where it’s needed.” are necessary”. , and I’ll leave it at that.
The Army is expected to spend some $290 million on cloud adoption in the coming months, amid a push that service officials have dubbed “the year of action.” The figure is a slice of the service’s $16.6 billion cyber and computing request for fiscal year 2023, itself part of its larger $178 billion budget plan.
The military has already moved hundreds of applications and systems to the cloud; a potential billion-dollar deal, known as Enterprise Application Migration and Modernization, or EAMM, is set to continue the clip. EAMM is expected to be rolled out in the second or third trimester.
“The military is all about cloud computing, and you’ll see more and more capabilities delivered to the field, both from the enterprise and the tactical arena in the future,” said Judge, who has worked in the private sector for over a year. decade. “In 2018, I would hear a lot more, ‘Well, do we need the cloud? What is the cloud?’ In 2021, 2022, 2023, it’s: ‘How can I get to the cloud faster?’ »
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networking, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely the Cold War cleanup and the development of nuclear weapons — for a South Carolina daily. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.