From Federal News Network, November 1:
A top NSA official says the goal of the initiative is about finding "the right compute solution for each mission, the right option for every distinct problem."
After years of development, the National Security Agency’s top-secret hybrid cloud environment is now operational.
The NSA has been pursuing the “Hybrid Compute Initiative” since at least 2020. The agency’s goal is to evolve the NSA’s on-premise GovCloud environment into a mix of commercial cloud capabilities and hardware-as-a-service offerings.
Jennifer Kron, chief financial manager at the NSA, said the Hybrid Compute Initiative and its updated “Intelligence Community GovCloud” went live earlier this year. Kron previously helped lead the NSA’s IT initiatives as the agency’s deputy chief information officer.
“This year it went live, and we are deploying mission with our partner,” Kron said Oct. 29 during the DoD Intelligence Information System (DoDIIS) conference in Omaha, Neb. “That’s our core mission services, our IC GovCloud, which provides hundreds of programs and systems that are used not only by NSA, but across the IC and [the Defense Department].”
The NSA awarded Amazon Web Services a potential $10 billion contract as part of the Hybrid Compute Initiative. AWS was re-awarded the contract after a 15-month acquisition saga, including a successful Microsoft protest that forced the NSA to re-evaluate its initial award.
The Hybrid Compute Initiative is complementary to the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) contract, which offers the services of five major cloud vendors. Kron said the NSA’s initiative is “all about finding the right compute solution for each mission, the right option for every distinct problem and for every distinct purpose....
....MUCH MORE
Also at Federal News Network:
Here’s what a second Trump term might look like for federal employees
