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Tag: FedScoop

  • US Air Force Moving Ahead With Its Own Cloud Platform, Not Waiting for DOD

    US Air Force Moving Ahead With Its Own Cloud Platform, Not Waiting for DOD

    The US Air Force is moving ahead with its cloud plans rather than waiting on the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract.

    JWCC is the successor to the doomed $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract that was initially awarded to Microsoft. AWS challenged the award and kept it tied up in court for so long that the DOD ultimately abandoned it in favor of the multi-vendor JWCC. The DOD is currently seeking bids from AWS, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle.

    The Air Force has decided it doesn’t want to wait for the DOD and risk another delay. The military branch is instead moving forward with its own Cloud One endeavor.

    “The short story is we’re not waiting, we haven’t waited, we will continue to not wait for anybody else to come and provide us with capability,” Air Force CIO Lauren Knausenberger told FedScoop. “We’re moving forward, we’re moving out, we’re continuing to improve” Cloud One, she added.

    Knausenberger went on to call Cloud One the “world’s largest cloud instantiation for any commercial or government entity.”

    The Air Force tapped SAIC to implement its own multicloud approach, using AWS, Google, and Microsoft’s cloud platforms. While the DOD is continuing to pursue the $9 billion JWCC contract, Knausenberger doesn’t see a conflict with Cloud One. In fact, if JWCC becomes a reality, she believes it may offer “better pricing on compute” and ultimately complement Cloud One.

    “And if it does, we’ll still use our Cloud One as a front door and we will purchase that compute via JWCC,” she added.

  • AWS Survives Review Process to Win NSA Contract

    AWS Survives Review Process to Win NSA Contract

    AWS has won a major contract with the National Security Agency (NSA), after the contract award came under review.

    AWS was awarded a $10 billion contract with the NSA, but Microsoft immediately challenged the award, much as AWS had challenged Microsoft winning a major contract with the Department of Defense. According to FedScoop, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) instructed the NSA to review the bid after concerns in how Microsoft’s bid was evaluated. Despite the review, the NSA has once again awarded AWS the win.

    “NSA recently awarded a contract to Amazon Web Services that delivers cloud computing services to support the Agency’s mission,” said an NSA spokesperson. “This contract is a continuation of NSA’s Hybrid Compute Initiative to modernize and address the robust processing and analytical requirements of the Agency.”

    “We’re honored that after thorough review, the NSA selected AWS as the cloud provider for the Hybrid Compute Initiative, and we’re ready to help deliver this critical national security capability,” said an AWS spokesperson.

  • Peraton Scores $1 Billion DOD Contract to Combat Misinformation

    Peraton Scores $1 Billion DOD Contract to Combat Misinformation

    Peraton has won a five-year, $979 million contract with the Department of Defense (DOD) to combat misinformation.

    In the digital age, misinformation has become a major problem impacting all sectors, from social media to the military. Peraton has been contracted to help the DOD combat misinformation, specifically that originating from US adversaries, according to FedScoop.

    “Since 2016, Peraton has executed campaigns to promote regional security and stability,” said Tom Afferton, president of Peraton’s cyber missions sector. “Our ability to provide the U.S. government with insight, expertise, and influence helps ensure the safety of Americans, our allies, and the more than 550 million people under U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, spanning three continents and 20 nations.”

    The contract underscores the evolving threats governments and militaries are now facing.

  • ATF Moving Data and Applications to the Cloud

    ATF Moving Data and Applications to the Cloud

    FedScoop is reporting that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will soon close its last data center as it finishes moving its data and applications to AWS.

    ATF CTO Mason McDaniel told FedScoop the goal is to completely transition users to its AWS cloud environment by the end of the year. The last remaining data center will then be converted into office space.

    The transition has been a long time coming, as the agency has worked to modernize its IT after shutting down its disaster recovery data center in 2013. From that point forward, the agency was operating without a safety net, a situation it put to the test in 2016 when it had to evacuate its data center for two days as a result of weather. With no disaster recovery plan in place, the agency had to hope for the best that nothing catastrophic would happen during those two days. Moving to AWS will provide the safety and redundancy the agency needs.

    McDaniel believes the upgrade to the cloud should result in significant efficiency gains as well.

    “What they’re going to see soon after that, once we finish this part, is a focus back on the actual processes themselves,” McDaniel told FedScoop. “Many, many of the processes that our users and analysts and agents have to go through require them to go from system to system to system because of how we built things in projects over time. Every time something new was needed, the teams that developed the old ones were gone. And over time, we’ve got all the tiny little disconnected systems so the users have to manually go back and forth between them to do stuff.”

    This, in turn, should reduce by “half or more the amount of time it takes them to do a lot of their daily activities,” McDaniel said. “That’s when they’re really going to start seeing the benefits.”