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The Army Commercial Cloud Service Providers Policy

Monday, Aug. 10, 2015

What is it?

The Army Policy for Migration to Commercial Cloud Service Providers(CSPs) provides guidance for migration to, and use of, CSPs, in support of the Army and Defense Department directives and the Army Cloud Computing Strategy.

What is the Army doing?

Under Secretary of the Army signed a memorandum on June 9, 2014, which directed that all systems and applications providing enterprise services migrate to designated core data centers no later than the end of fiscal year 2018. It also established the Army Application Migration Business Office (AAMBO) and required that all systems and applications migrate to a DOD-approved hosting facility.

The Commercial Cloud Service Provider Policy focuses on the commercial CSP migration and hosting option, and reinforces the overarching Army application migration process. It identifies systems and applications not permitted to migrate to off-premises commercial CSPs, and roles and responsibilities for organizations with applications migrating to, or using, commercial CSPs. It also outlines cybersecurity and commercial CSP acquisition and use requirements.

Why is this important to the Army?

Transitioning to cloud-based solutions and services advances the Army’s long-term objective of reducing ownership, operation and sustainment of hardware and other commoditized information technology. Cloud computing will help enable ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service-provider interaction.

This switch is a critical component of achieving the Joint Information Environment objectives outlined by the DOD Chief Information Officer. Over time, cloud computing will significantly boost operational efficiency, increase network security and posture the Army to adopt innovative technology more quickly at a lower cost.

Maximum leverage of the cloud computing environment is extremely important for the Army.

What does the Army have planned for the future?

The next step is to develop metrics that allow the Army to gauge commercial CSP performance, to monitor cost savings and to drive efficiencies while increasing situational awareness and overall network security. In the future, cloud computing will position the Army to harness the power of Big Data analytics through a common operating environment that enables on-demand access to information regardless of location or device.

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