
US Army Cloud Computing Strategy [pdf] - remarkEon
http://ciog6.army.mil/Portals/1/Army_Cloud_Computing_Strategy%20Final_v1_0.pdf
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remarkEon
So I submitted this at work out of frustration after I went down the rabbit
hole trying to find the phone number (seriously) for the NEC to get a simple
question answered about managing/changing the UI on the sharepoint (because
those rights are sequestered to literally one dude who works in a basement and
is currently on leave) and got lost in the just awful intranet. The Army faces
some different requirements for cloud services and business enterprise
software, but most of the time at work I find myself just getting lost in how
people think these things work versus how they actually work.

I'll be out of the Army in 60 days, but most of what I do right now has to do
with writing orders and building other data products. 9 times out of 10, the
folks above me want to do things with microsoft products that they were just
not built for. Powerpoint is not a place to store and analyze data, yet that's
how the boss wants things. "Take this and make a powerpoint slide" is
something I hear a lot. So I read this hoping to find some future hope in how
things might be getting better in the future. Maybe.

Mostly, I guess I hoped to generate some discussion amongst you folks at HN
that undoubtedly know more than I do about how and why products work and about
what the Army and the DoD at large could do to get better because for the
first time since I commissioned I have a boss that likes to listen to what me
and my peers have to say.

As an aside, I also feel like Army leadership has a weird relationship with
technology. Especially folks that, like me, are from a combat arms branch and
are now on staff.

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niels_olson
20 years of this and, as usual, some opaque document that mainly conveys the
point that the DoD has no idea what they're getting into. My best effort was
trimming a 158 page document down to 39. Only problem was people actually
started reading it.

~~~
Pyxl101
Perhaps I have a different perspective, but skimming the document I get the
impression that the Army understands fairly well what they're getting into.
The document is written at a high level, but seems to be written by folks who
have an understanding of why they want to do it, why it's possible now and
wasn't in the past, and what the problems are that they'll need to solve to
get it done. It's a strategy and vision document, not an implementation plan.
What gives you the other impression?

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gtirloni
_Leverage DoD-approved IaaS service providers for Army-unique systems and
applications_

Is there such a list of DoD-approved providers?

~~~
_spoonman
I work with a USAF organization, helping them to gain a footing in cloud
computing. It's not going so well, held up in large part by the Department of
Information Systems (DISA). They have a "cloud" environment that they want any
DoD entity to migrate to if that entity is thinking about going to the cloud.

Amazon has authority to host Level 1 and 2 data, which is a fancy term the DoD
uses for "Public, Releasable information." They have PROVISIONAL authority to
host Levels 3-5 data, which refers to For Official Use Only (FOUO) data.

Amazon has spent untold amounts of money passing various DoD-level
certification packages like FedRAMP which looks at everything from physical
security to how they prepare their invoices. AFAIK they are the only company
to do such a thing.

As of now, unless you have a waiver from a General, you can't host your DoD
system on AWS. We tried to enroll in DoD's pilot program for cloud computing,
but were rejected because we didn't have a Colonel backing us.

~~~
Qworg
Azure has P-ATO since 2013 - I'm not sure how that stacks up vs. AWS.

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bcg1
Unfortunately, this document is not actually about a strategy for the US Army
to destroy cloud computing, or even the term 'cloud computing'.

~~~
dmix
That would be the domain of the US Cyber Command not US Army.

~~~
bcg1
Good one

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sjreese
This is one BIG give-away - the internet is NOT a person, that can join a
fight and be withdrawn from a fight. Iaas and Paas are already in the hands of
IBM, CSC and HB - So what's left .. Well its the for eyes only (NSA) type of
stuff. But it can't be in the hands Pvt.G2 think (Manning,Snownden) and other
do-gooders; So what to do.. Well it's ATS time with "total info awareness"
deep-cover such that only 5 people know how to access it. Off book Black-
budget - That's where we come in with (single purpose HW/SW) that links to the
public domain. But is self-deleting upon detection and re-installing on
demand. Top dollars paid on spec. -- psalm 23

