Members of industry, anxious to discover new opportunities to support government agencies, gained some additional insight into the commercial milCloud effort underway by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
During DISA's annual Forecast to Industry event in Baltimore Nov. 17, John Hale, chief of enterprise applications at DISA, provided an update on the milCloud effort, which is a high-security cloud-services product portfolio DISA manages. Given that the initiative is in source selection currently, precluding him from providing many details, Hale did offer that they are bringing a commercial cloud provider into their Defense Department data centers to provide commercial services. The big thing for the department, he said, is their data stays in-house in their facilities, which is a core requirement for some mission sets.
The other kind of sign of milCloud 2.0's significance is its utility-based computing model, Hale said. One of the benefits of levering commercial cloud capabilities in the past has been utility-based building. From a department perspective, he noted DoD struggles with the way many outside the department operate, citing the acquisition process as an example. When moving to a system such as utility-based computing, that is different than what DoD is used to. How does DoD translate between those two? milCloud 2.0 is going to "break some eggs," he said.
One of the key takeaways from the milCloud 2.0 overview is really to ensure that DoD can provide cloud-based services via commercial cloud providers and still meet all the department's needs from a security perspective, while still offering that utility-based computing model, Hale said.
Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.
