Eric McGrane, a growth leader for the defense enterprise services sector at GDIT, which manages the platform, said SaaS is one of several innovations that milCloud...
For our customers, it's a hybrid cloud world. Customers will have some on-premise, like some mainframes that will probably stay put. They've got Azure and AWS and all kinds of clouds. And what we are for our customers is that one stop shop. So, if a customer needs some AWS, they can get some AWS. If they want some on-premise, they can do that, too. We're truly agnostic and we care about what the DoD needs.
Growth Leader, Defense Enterprise Services Sector, GDIT
One of the things that customers didn't really grasp early on was the data transaction fees. That's a major selling point for on premise cloud. Because we sit on the DoDIN, we don't have data transaction fees. We have customers that are aware of application performance and what their app is doing on those data transfers, so they're getting smarter about what app is best for where. From an OCONUS perspective, the next thing is tactical edge and having cloud out to the warfighter overseas, we're starting to come up with how to architect a networking solution around data sovereignty. The DoD CIO is working on that right now. All of that rolls into this Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative, which is going to help our warfighters have data sharing, cloud, AI at the edge and all of that.
Growth Leader, Defense Enterprise Services Sector, GDIT
The Defense Information Systems Agency launched its milCloud services in 2013. DISA upgraded it to version 2 around 2018.
As of last March,milCloud 2.0 included 4,500 workloads from 89 different defense mission partners.
Now, according to DISA, defense agencies and military services are looking to milCloud 2.0 for software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Eric McGrane, a growth leader for the defense enterprise services sector at GDIT, which manages the platform, said SaaS is one of several innovations that milCloud 2.0 is offering.
“We rearchitected our cloud to a VMware solution. So when you look at DoD 99.9%, virtualized on VMware, and so now we have a VMware Impact Level 5 and, soon to be IL6 cloud. So it makes those migrations easier, and it’s a very robust, hardy, good cloud,” McGrane said on the Innovation in Government show sponsored by Carahsoft. “The second is the announcement that we will broker Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well. We’ve all seen what’s been going on in the news to get with JEDI, and now the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC), so the demand for off premise cloud is real. From a contract perspective, having that option has brought a lot of other customers with interest for both on-premise and off-premise [cloud services].”
McGrane said the move to VMWare would make it easier for defense agencies and services to migrate applications to milCloud 2.0.
One example of this, McGrane said, is the Defense Contract Management Agency, which closed down its data center and moved all of its workloads to milCloud 2.0 in about 90 days.
He said another large customer with the Army moved about 100 applications to milCloud 2.0’s AWS instance.
“For our customers, it’s a hybrid cloud world. Customers will have some on-premise, like some mainframes that will probably stay put. They’ve got Azure and AWS and all kinds of clouds. And what we are for our customers is, like you said earlier, that one stop shop, right? So if a customer needs some AWS, they can get some AWS. If they want some on premise, they can do that too,” McGrane said. “We’re truly agnostic and we care about what the DoD needs.”
McGrane said another change coming to milCloud 2.0 in the near future is the approval for IL6, meaning DoD can use it for classified workloads.
He said GDIT expects there to be a “tremendous” amount of demand for IL6 access.
“Once we have that on contract, we can start rolling those workloads into milCloud 2.0 for hosting. The nice part about our contract is there’s no waiting in line. There’s no negotiating a task order negotiating a price. It’s all right there on the portal, the price is what the price is you can do it,” McGrane said. “We have customers that hit the portal and buy their cloud on their own, and it’s spun up in 24 hours. That speed and the ability to just transfer money quickly has been has been has been a major selling point for the contract.”
McGrane said DoD customers today are much more comfortable in how buy and manage cloud services than ever before.
“One of the things that customers didn’t really grasp early on was the data transaction fees. That’s a major selling point for on premise cloud, right? Because we sit on the DoDIN, we don’t have data transaction fees,” he said. “We have customers that are aware of application performance and what their app is doing on those data transfers, so they’re getting smarter about what app is best for where. From an outside the continental U. S. perspective, the next thing is tactical edge and having cloud out to the warfighter overseas. We’re starting to come up with how do we architect a networking solution around data sovereignty, right? The DoD CIO is working on that right now. All of that rolls into this Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative, which is going to help our warfighters have data sharing, cloud, AI at the edge and all of that.”
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