AWS’ Liz Martin: Army Developing Classified Cloud Environment to Scale Resources

Liz Martin, Department of Defense director at Amazon Web Services, underscored the U.S Army’s use of the AWS Cloud to create a tactical cloud environment envisioned to help with their data processing and resource scaling.

In a blog posted Tuesday, Martin shared how the XVIII Airborne Corps– an Army data centric force headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina– created a cloud environment using AWS GovCloud (US) as a proof of concept in support of the Dragon Cloud initiative.

The POC environment was able to host corps-developed applications at Impact Level 5 and demonstrate their interoperability and functionality in the unclassified dedicated space, according to Martin.

With AWS and Enterprise Cloud Management Agency support, XVIII Airborne Corps is now working on the Dragon Cloud IL 6 environment to provide deployed warfighters with an operational classified space.

“Commanders can utilize cloud computing to access mission command applications from anywhere [and] can expect to see a 60 percent reduction in hardware requirements when deploying forces away from the home station,” wrote Martin.

AWS Cloud features are being utilized to enable automatic scaling of resources and reduced network administrative workload.

“The environment’s ability to host live strategic data in the cloud allows for users to operate in distributed environments at the tactical edge effectively over a persistent data fabric. These innovations allow for a more consistent, reliable, and available network at fractions of the cost.”

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