Flank Speed was one of the U.S. Navy’s top IT modernization priorities and the service’s CIO is applying lessons from its implementation to another critical modernization effort.
What Is Flank Speed?
Flank Speed is a unique U.S. Navy enterprise system for daily work, providing a secure ecosystem for working with colleagues, cloud computing for documents and files and Microsoft Office 365 productivity programs. The service had an assertive strategy to transition users as fast as possible while prioritizing mission requirements and network infrastructure readiness.
Barry Tanner, U.S. Navy deputy CIO, said in CHIPS magazine that one of the most challenging aspects of implementing Flank Speed was scaling up fast. Tanner said he helped deliver Flank Speed in a narrow time frame during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. This required his team to create, resource, execute and adjust a strategy on the fly as conditions changed and also provide a platform not just for the emergency at the time, but one that would position the U.S. Navy for future initiatives.
“I think (it) really prepared me for where I am now,” Tanner said. “It required us to think bigger than the immediate problem. It required us to understand all of the things that go into developing and deploying at scale … and it forced us to think really hard about not just solving the problem, but solving it the right way.”
Tanner is one of the Department of Defense speakers at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Digital Transformation Summit on April 24. Hear directly from Tanner about the U.S. Navy’s innovative IT efforts and the role technology plays in advancing the service’s goals. Sign up today!
What Did the Navy Learn From Flank Speed?
Tanner is applying that lesson about scaling to the U.S. Navy’s Nautilus Virtual Desktop, or NVD, program, an IT system built from the ground up leveraging Microsoft’s Azure Virtual Desktop. Tanner said his team took that scaling lesson from Flank Speed and designed NVD from the beginning to scale quickly.
That lesson paid off when NVD scaled from 25,000 users to 50,000 within one week.
“It lets us flexibly pivot and address issues when they come up, at scale, which is something that (has) traditionally been very hard to do,” Tanner said. “So a little bit of pain up front has really helped us to be able to respond better going forward.”
Another tough lesson from Flank Speed for Tanner was demonstrating, and not just telling, its value to service leaders and not just telling it. They would ask why the U.S. Navy was “throwing away” investment made in an existing platform.
Zero-Trust-Informed Principles
The service designed Flank Speed from scratch using zero trust principles instead of adjusting the platform previously built for Microsoft Office 365. Zero trust is a computing concept that suggests threats can exist both inside and outside an IT system, requiring regular verification of every operator and device trying to access computing resources.
“(We told them) we’re not throwing it away. We’re learning from it and we’re shifting to what we need,” Tanner said. “We had to prove it, and it took a lot of investment of personal and political capital by the leadership team at (U.S Navy) CIO at the time.”
Barbara Supplee, SAIC executive vice president for navy business, will moderate a discussion with Tanner at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Digital Transformation Summit about bringing the enterprise to the edge. The Department of Defense has emphasized the importance of implementing 5G and edge computing into operations, especially for higher performance data-driven applications and machine-to-machine, or m2m, communications.
Who Is Barbara Supplee?
Supplee is an expert in cloud computing, digital engineering, AI and machine learning, and large-scale training, logistics and IT managed services. She was previously vice president and general manager of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps division at General Dynamics Information Technology. Prior to GDIT, Supplee served as senior vice president of CACI’s engineering solutions and services business, working with the U.S. Navy’s acquisition commands and public shipyards.
Who Is Barry Tanner?
As deputy CIO for the U.S. Navy, Tanner oversees the service’s more than $12 billion IT portfolio. His key focus areas include zero trust architecture and operations, cyber readiness, operational resilience, and continuous integration and delivery. Prior to becoming deputy CIO, Tanner served as the director of the DevSecOps Center of Excellence for the U.S. Navy’s program executive office for digital and enterprise services, or PEO Digital. Over his career, Tanner has held positions with multiple technology companies, most recently as a senior associate with Booz Allen Hamilton’s strategic innovation group.
Take advantage of the opportunity to learn more about U.S. Navy IT modernization at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Digital Transformation Summit! This is a great opportunity to learn more about what the service has in store for digital transformation in 2025. Don’t miss out!
