mit 18 1 final

The Voice of Military Information Dominance

Network Modernizer

Douglas K. WiltsieProgram Executive OfficerEnterprise Information Systems U.S. Army

Satellite Leasing O DISA Acropolis O Enterprise LicensingExpanding Big Data O Infrastructure Modernization

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C4March 2014

Volume 18, Issue 1

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Cover / Q&AFeatures

Douglas K. WiltsieProgram Executive Officer

Enterprise Information Systems U.S. Army

16

Departments Industry Interview2 eDitor’s PersPective3 Program notes4 PeoPle14 Data bytes26 cotsacoPia27 resource center

aDelaiDa v. severson, Ph.D.President and Chief Executive OfficerBushtex

5better buying for comsatcomCommercial satellite operators are hailing a recently approved congressional provision that encourages the Department of Defense to investigate using multi-year leases for commercial satellite services and for procuring government-owned payloads on commercial satellites. By Karen e. Thuermer

8resource guiDe: comsatcom banDWiDthListings identify companies offering on a GSA schedule dedicated bandwidth and power on a communications satellite in any available COMSATCOM frequency band.

9 citaDel for cyber-DefenseA Defense Information Systems Agency program named for an ancient fortress is using big data analytics to develop and strengthen protections for the place where the most important treasures are stored in the modern world—the cyber-realm.By harrison Donnelly

12 enlarging big DataWhile organizations struggle with the heavy demands of acquiring, storing and analyzing big data, the real challenge may be in making sure that their data is big enough.By harrison Donnelly

March 2014Volume 18, Issue 1military information technology

28

neW Direction for enterPrise licensingA new software licensing program announced by the Army is seeking to resolve the dilemma between uniform and specialized needs by offering two competing enterprise licensing deals and allowing units to select the one best suited to their needs. By Karen e. Thuermer

23

“From an acquisition

perspective, our network

modernization initiative has proven that it is possible to

meet or exceed performance,

save money, and even accelerate implementation

schedules. It is by no means easy,

but we have been successful because we are willing to

change traditional approaches.”

-Douglas K. Wiltsie

army’s cable comPany tacKles aging infrastructureAs the United States constructs a new city of more than 40,000 residents in South Korea, under the major relocation of forces going on in that country, the “Army’s cable company” will be hard at work creating a communications infrastructure able to meet the demands of both military operations and modern living.By harrison Donnelly

20

Underscoring the trend toward enterprise licensing of software, the Department of Defense recently entered into a three-year, $40.5 million joint enterprise license agreement ( JELA) with CDW-G for Adobe products, effectively leveraging the buying power of 2.6 million DoD personnel with the Army, Air Force and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

The department’s second JELA follows its 2012 deal for Microsoft products, which is also covered in this issue. (See story, p. 20) Like it, the Adobe agree-ment seeks to reduce costs and improve interoperability and collaboration, and supports combatant command headquarters for which the Army and Air Force are the executive agents.

As a result, the Army, Air Force and DISA now have a single vehicle for accessing the latest Adobe technologies, which include Acrobat Pro, Experience Manager Document Services, and a number of Creative Cloud subscriptions for each organization. Although the Adobe cloud model allows instant software upgrades and file storage, the current DoD operational model will not require a network connection and will be installed and operated as traditional desktop software with file storage on the local device.

“The JELA is a best practice approach to answering enterprise software requirements for DoD and joint operations,” said Lieutenant General Michael Basla, Air Force chief of information dominance and chief information officer. “The agreement with Adobe not only produces substantial savings of $16.6 million over the next three years, but also allows us to move beyond electronic versions of forms and begin transforming business processes using online, fillable ‘smart’ forms tied to databases.”

DISA was the lead organization for the contract, which was awarded to CDW-G, an Adobe value-added reseller. This is the first Adobe JELA with the department, and provides the best pricing it has ever received for Adobe products.

I don’t know what other deals may be cooking behind the scenes, but I’ll bet that you are going to see more JELAs popping up in the months to come.

Harrison DonnellyeDiTor

eDitor’S PerSPectiVe


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MAINGATE Tactical Networking System Nears Completion

A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program designed to overcome the technical incompatibility between communications systems that can hinder information sharing and timely command and control decisions between multinational forces, U.S. govern-ment agencies and U.S. troops operating together in forward-deployed locations is nearing completion and transfer of its latest version to Army warfighters in Afghanistan.

The Mobile Ad hoc Interoperability Network Gateway (MAINGATE) program has provided insights into tactical networking of the future, where systems will need more adaptability and capability. The MAINGATE system combines two advanced technologies to provide a reliable, interoperable network for connecting current and future forces from the tactical edge.

The first technology is MAINGATE’s high capacity Wireless IP Network radio, which provides a terrestrial “Everything over IP” backbone with ample capacity to support multiple channels of voice, video and data.

The second technology is MAINGATE’s Interoperability Gateway, which provides intercon-nectivity for users with incompatible communications equipment. The MAINGATE system provides a tactical mid-tier communications capability between front-line troops and organi-zations, and the higher-level systems like the Army’s Warfighter Information Network-Tactical infrastructure.

DARPA and contractor Raytheon have been developing MAINGATE since 2008, and various elements of the technology have already made their way into existing U.S. Army systems. Army brigade-level exercises have tested a number of MAINGATE units, as have operational trials with U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The system has already proven its worth; during a recent operational deployment in Afghanistan, MAINGATE enabled sharing of data between different coalition partners’ systems so a commander in the base defense operations center could view a video feed of an attempted base intrusion as it occurred.

A key feature of MAINGATE is that it is designed to be upgradeable to future technologies, so the system stays current with the latest commercial IP-based communications tech refresh. This design flexibility allows advances in military and commercial systems to quickly integrate state-of-the-art capabilities to front-line troops.

“We’re transitioning a proven capability that can be kept up-to-date with the latest IP technology standards,” Gremban said. “Just as a smartphone offers the capability to do more than make phone calls, MAINGATE is much more than a radio—it’s a backbone architecture enabling video, data and voice sharing among a diversity of networks and devices.”

Air Force Seeks Innovations in

Cross-Domain Security

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate is looking for innovative new ways to share information across different levels of security.

The directorate’s Cross Domain Innovation and Science recently posted a pre-solicitation announcement calling for new capabilities within the multi-level security (MLS) and cybersecurity environments that promote the state of the art for secure, accreditable resilient and reactive capa-bilities to enhance information exchange between multiple security domains within both enterprise and mobile/tactical environments.

The announcement focuses on developing new technologies to allow secure data sharing; trusted computing; smart routing; cyber-defense; MLS trust at the tactical edge; and a comprehensive, multi-security domain, user-defined operational picture to effectively and efficiently improve the state-of-the-art for defense enterprise, cloud and mobile/tactical computing/operations.

Five distinct technology areas are included:

• Multi-Enclave/Multi-Domain Cyber User Defined Operational Picture—Extending enterprise status monitoring efforts and cross domain solutions adaptability to meet greater operator need.

• High Risk Data Type Mitigation—Providing micro-virtualized ultrahigh-risk content and investigations for malicious behavior before passing them to other security domains.

• Fine-Grained Grammar for Orchestration—Use of formal grammars for quick adaptation of workflows to meet changing mission/security/performance requirements.

• Content and Label Based Routing—Extending the trust provided at node and network environments to the information objects being passed to assure end-to-end trust in passing and delivering information to recipients.

• MLS Trust at the Edge—Extending the robustness and usability of MLS mobile and desktop endpoint technology to meet the critical needs of mobile warriors.

www.MIT-kmi.com MIT 18.1 | 3

President Obama has nominated Navy Vice Admiral Michael S. Rogers to become commander of U.S. Cyber Command. In addition, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has desig-nated Rogers to serve as director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security

Service. Rogers currently commands U.S. Fleet Cyber Command. If confirmed by the Senate, he will replace General Keith Alexander, who has served as the NSA director since 2005, and the U.S. Cyber Command commander since 2010. Subsequently, Rear Admiral Jan E. Tighe was nominated for the rank of vice admiral and assigned as Fleet Cyber Command. In addition, Richard Ledgett has been selected to serve as NSA deputy director, where he will be the senior civilian at the agency and its chief operating officer.

The list of Air Force colo-nels recently nominated for appointment to the rank of brigadier general includes Colonel Mitchel H. Butikofer, currently serving as director, policy and resources, Office of Information Dominance and chief informa-tion officer, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force; Colonel Peter J. Lambert, currently serving as commander, National Security Agency/Central Security Service Texas, NSA, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas; and Colonel Mary F. O’Brien, currently serving as vice

commander, Air Force ISR Agency, with duty location at Fort Meade, Md.

Following Senate confirmation to three star rank, Lieutenant General Robert S. Ferrell has assumed the office of chief infor-mation officer/G-6 of the Army, replacing

Lieutenant General Susan Lawrence (Ret.). Ferrell previously served as commanding general, Army Communications-Electronics Command and Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. Lawrence recently accepted a position as a senior vice president for Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense market group.

ManTech International has hired Christopher Bishop as senior vice president of sales for its Mission Solutions and Services Group.

PeoPle Compiled by Kmi media Group staff

Program noteS Compiled by Kmi media Group staff

Lt. Gen. Robert S. Ferrell

Vice Adm. Michael S. Rogers

Army Depot Zeroes Out Thin Client Computers

To maintain the cutting edge of digital communications and technology, the S6-Information Technologies team at Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD), Texas, last fall completed deployment of a new zero client system replacing about 2,200 thin client computers throughout the hangars and CCAD.

“The zero client is better than the thin client,” said Hector Leyva, CCAD IT system admin-istrator. “You don’t have an actual PC at your desk, but [the zero client] gives you that experi-ence as though you do.”

While thin clients utilize a Windows Embedded Compact operating system to connect with other computers, zero clients operate using a cloud based architecture that resides in the local data center. This new technology simplifies and reduces administrative support, a move that allows S6 to become more efficient and cost effective.

Each zero client workstation offers a full Windows 7 desktop complete with Outlook, CCAD’s email system, and other applications like Microsoft Word and Electronic Shop Production System. The clients also have full audio to play

depot videos and news programs—a welcome change for current thin client users.

“Now you can watch the CCAD News and listen to it,” said Chad Hammer, the lead project manager for the zero client initiative. “This is becoming one of the popular features of the zero client. Thin clients could not play videos, and some of the thin clients didn’t have sound at all, so you could see why many users are excited about this.”

Issues with thin clients sparked the need for this change. “We tend to lose connection with the smartcard,” Leyva said of the old thin clients. “Users have to log off every now and then, which is becoming a problem because it takes time to launch everything back up again.”

In fact, thin client users had to reboot about 10 times a day from Common Access Card (CAC) failure, equaling about two and a half hours of wasted time just to log in.

But this won’t be a problem with the new zero clients. Once a user logs in, they stay in. The login procedure is also faster. IT found no CAC issues with zero client hardware or applications.

The system is an obvious boon for IT. “It allows S6 to standardize and improve the end user computing experience and back-end infrastructure management,” said Connie Salas, S6 director. “The standardization will result in increased mission effectiveness through improved accessibility, user device flexibility, tightly controlled security and enhanced computing capability.”

For CCAD’s IT technicians, zero clients mean better support and fewer trips to physical work-stations, since most issues can be resolved via remote troubleshooting. It should only take about 20 minutes to replace each system. Once they’re installed, users can log back in, launch their new profile and start rolling.

www.MIT-kmi.com4 | MIT 18.1

Commercial satellite operators are hailing a recently approved congressional provision that encourages the Department of Defense to investigate using multi-year leases for commercial satellite ser-vices and for procuring government-owned payloads on commercial satellites.

Signed by President Obama in late 2013, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fis-cal year 2014 includes a section criticizing DoD for habitually using single-year leases for securing commercial satellite services, calling them “the most expensive and least strategic method” of procure-ment.

The measure directs the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, in consultation with the DoD chief information officer, to come up with an acquisition strategy by March 2014 to enable the multi-year procurement of com-mercial satellite services.

Specifically, lawmakers declared, the strategy should include an analysis of financial or other benefits of doing multi-year acquisitions; analysis of risks associated with such acquisitions; identification of methods to address planning, programming, budgeting and execu-tion; liability in the event of a contract termination; identification

of changes needed in the process of developing and approving requirements; and the identification of any necessary changes to policies, proce-dures, regulations and statutes.

Assuming this strategy evolves on pace, industry experts predict that DoD could begin procuring addi-tional commercial satellite services toward the end of fiscal year 2014, or possibly early in fiscal 2015.

EfficiEnt ProcurEmEnt

A host of commercial satellite operators support the move to multi-year leasing, and have also proposed a series of other steps to make the communications satellite bandwidth procurement process more efficient.

Last year, for example, an industry group com-prising Intelsat General, SES Government Solutions,

Eutelsat America Corp., XTAR, and Telesat submitted a list of sugges-tions in a paper entitled: “The Seven Ways to Make the DoD a Better Buyer of Commercial SATCOM.”

The paper included several key concepts for achieving “better” buying, noted Andrew Ruszkowski, chief commercial officer for XTAR.

congrEss, industry urgE dod to movE to multi-yEar lEasing of commErcial satEllitE sErvicEs.

Andrew Ruszkowski

By KarEn E. thuErmEr

mit corrEsPondEnt


The recommendations included “establishing a base-line of how much commercial satellite communications DoD needs, and then budgeting and contracting for it; partnering with industry to build a protected commu-nications infrastructure for space systems; using hosted payloads; and having a single office that handles all commercial and military satellite capabilities to seam-lessly allocate military requirements between commercial and military assets,” said Ruszkowski, whose company specializes in providing customized X-band communica-tions services exclusively to U.S. and allied governments worldwide.

“XTAR and the commercial satellite operators are very encouraged to see our multi-year efforts for this action finally come to fruition,” said Ruszkowski. “We believe acquisition changes will save critical dollars that DoD needs for other programs that may be cut.”

By leasing commercial capacity on a long-term basis, he argued, DoD will have an opportunity to take a broader approach to planning its space architecture. That archi-tecture includes both commercial and government-owned satellites.

Ruszkowski and industry executives such as Myland Pride, director, government affairs and congressional relations for Intelsat General, and Air Force Brigadier General Tip Osterthaler (Ret.), president and chief executive officer for SES Government Solutions, concurred that funding a COMSATCOM infrastructure through short-term, spot market purchases is the most costly and inefficient method for fulfilling critical DoD needs.

“This discourages industry partners from making the invest-ments necessary to ensure there are sufficient, advanced capabilities available to support the nation’s long-term national security goals,” said Pride.

Actually, single year leases with the government are not neces-sarily detrimental to industry, Osterthaler acknowledged. That is particularly the case for SES, since more than 85 per-cent of its business is with commercial customers.

“In contrast, single year leases yield the highest prices on average as discounts are applied for both quantity of bandwidth leased as well as the length of the lease,” he said. “As a commercial satellite owner/operator, we actually gain terrific margin from short-term leases in high demand regions as a premium can be applied. For the commercial side of our busi-ness, most of our commercial customers understand that our SATCOM services are vital to their ability to take their product to market.”

Commercial customers view SES Government Solutions as critical infrastructure to their business, and plan and purchase accordingly with long-term leases, Osterthaler continued.

“In doing so, not only do they receive favorable rates, but they also secure access to the infrastruc-ture they rely upon for the long term,” he added. “In response, we at SES are able to make investment decisions on behalf of our long-term strategic cus-tomers, as it is to our mutual benefit that we have the type of capacity they need, where and when it is needed.”

Osterthaler said he sees this as the core benefit to the federal government, since it currently is not able to take advantage of the existing acquisition approach. “In fact, the current approach pres-ents not only the greatest cost. More importantly, it presents the greatest risk of not having access to the communications capability they need, where they need it in the future.”

Pride emphasized that under the NDAA provision, industry will be in a much better position to plan for the government’s future satellite capacity and capability requirements.

“The commercial satellite industry makes plans for future satellites based largely on known requirements,” Pride said. “As the commercial customers typically make long-term commit-

ments, industry is able to sit down with them and discuss long-term planning issues for coverage, band, throughput and availability requirements, and other issues. Knowing that the end-customer will be sign-ing up for the type of capacity [that comes from] a long-term lease makes it possible for the satellite service providers to incorporate these requests into future plans.”

accEss to sErvicE

For all of the above stated reasons, these execu-tives collectively expect the big winner from NDAA to be the federal budget, since long-term commitments are priced more attractively than short-term com-mitments. “The end-user always pays less for a longer term,” Pride said.

There will be cost savings from the fact that cus-tomers who buy any service of limited supply on a short-term basis, relative to other buyers of the same service, are going to pay a higher rate and run the risk of losing access to the service they need because someone else, who is willing to commit, edges in front of them.

XTAR-LANT provides commercial X-band services to U.S., European and Allied government agencies and military forces. Its coverage encompasses a region extending from Denver in the United States to South America, the Middle East and Africa, coverage of which is shown here. [Image courtesy of XTAR]

Brig. Gen. Tip Osterthaler

Myland Pride


DoD’s one-year leases leave the government vulnerable to both higher rates and losing access to service. As Ruszkowski pointed out, industry is capable of operating with a one-year lease. But it is DoD that is accepting a risky position.

“But the real tragedy is the lost opportunity that DoD experi-ences,” he said. “By not committing to the COMSATCOM industry as a partner in doing things like exercising long-term leases, DoD is missing the valuable chance to realize a greater space capability at a lower cost from a reliable partner.”

Industry cannot plan and invest for the long term, since the single-year scenario does not give any assurance of what each year’s requirements and budget will be. “This means that industry cannot add new technology and resources, as we do not know what our role and the specific requirements will be beyond that one year,” he said.

DoD will benefit immediately from the multi-year leasing provi-sion, said Ruszkowski, noting, “They have been buying commercial SATCOM for $1 billion each year for nearly a decade.”

The Defense Business Board has estimated that use of 10-15-year capital leases could save DoD $100 million each year.

“Some believe this amount is much smaller than the benefit they would see,” Ruszkowski commented. “These savings could then enable DoD to pay for other critical programs. In addition, XTAR and others could focus on the specific needs that get spelled out in the multi-year contracts and better tailor services to the warfighter’s specific need.”

For example, XTAR has the ability to address DoD security requirements to create resilience in the contested environments of the future. “With multi-year leases, we would target our resources to best suit these requirements,” Ruszkowski emphasized. “Airborne applications would be another good place to focus resources, since these applications tend to be bandwidth intensive and are well served by commercial satellite service.”

XTAR, in particular, has served various airborne applications for some time, including airborne ISR requirements. “If DoD were to make a clear commitment to leverage commercial SATCOM for air-borne needs, XTAR and other operators would surely customize their payloads to be even more useful to those applications,” he added.

These steps could include directing fixed satellite beams where most needed, and directing steerable beam power to the most important coverage areas, as well as adjusting steerable beam width to provide the best balance of performance (power) and coverage.

Another helpful step could be to include specific funding levels in the budget for COMSATCOM. “The user would plan for a specific program and work with industry in that process,” said Ruszkowski. “This would also help DoD get more of the features they want, as they would buy the service for the program duration and not just lease it.”

With the authority to enter into long-term, multi-year leases to procure commercial SATCOM bandwidth, the government would be in position to engage in contracts with industry that are similar to those SES has with its commercial customers, Osterthaler said. Today, those customers make up the vast majority of SES’s business.

“Acting in this capacity and as a strategic customer to SES, we would be in a better position to make the investments in our fleet in the types of capability, locations and special features of interest to the government with the assurance they will be part of a long-term investment,” he remarked.

DoD officials, meanwhile, have responded cautiously to the provision.

“DoD is currently engaged in an effort to evaluate ways to better leverage, integrate and acquire commercial satellite communica-tions capabilities. The evaluation of acquisition strategies includes contracting methods (multi-year versus multiple year operating leases), and investment strategies (capital leases and up-front invest-ments). Various pilot projects are being considered to identify real impediments to these strategies to determine if changes to acquisi-tion regulations, financial management regulations, or statutes are necessary,” said Lieutenant Colonel Damien Pickart, a DoD spokes-man.

“That said, some of the acquisition strategies impose a level of risk that necessitates that DoD ensure that user demand exists to efficiently use the capacity acquired, funding is available to pay for the capacity over the period of the contract, and the commercial SATCOM resources are properly monitored, managed and shared with all potential DoD users,” he noted. “The ongoing analysis includes methods to improve the confidence of demand prediction tools currently available to the department, and to instantiate an enterprisewide resource utilization monitoring and management capability.”

The results of the evaluation will be reported to Congress, Pick-art added. O

For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at [email protected] or search our online archives

for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com.

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Visit: MobileDeviceSecurity.Dsigroup.Org


Commercial Satellite Communications Transponded Capacity on GSA Schedule

(Editor’s Note: The following listings include companies owning/operating or reselling dedicated bandwidth and power on a communications satellite in any available COMSATCOM frequency band, including but not limited to, L-, S-,C-, X-, Ku, extended Ku-, Ka-, and UHF. COMSATCOM Transponded Capacity refers to satellite bandwidth and power only. Company names appear as originally contracted, with changes noted where known.)

AIS EngineeringSilver Spring, Md. www.aisengineering.com

Artel LLC13665 Dulles Technology Dr.Suite 300Herndon, VA 20171

Artel has been a trusted provider to the U.S. government since 1986, delivering a full portfolio of satellite and terrestrial network communications and infrastructure, cybersecurity, risk management and IT solutions.

Michael Fraser Senior Vice President, Strategy and [email protected]

Astrium Services Government(now Airbus Defence and Space)Rockville, Md.www.astrium-eads.com

BoeingAnnapolis Junction, Md.www.boeing.com

BringCom Sterling, Va.www.bringcom.com

BushtexGilbert, Ariz.www.bushtex.com

CapRock Government Solutions(now Harris CapRock)Fairfax, Va.www.harriscaprock.com

DRS Technical ServicesHerndon, Va.www.drs.com

Eutelsat AmericaWashington, D.C.www.eutelsatamerica.com

Globecomm SystemsHauppauge, N.Y.www.globecomm.com

Hughes Network SystemsGermantown, Md.www.hughes.com

Intelsat GeneralBethesda, Md.www.intelsatgeneral.com

Knight Sky Consulting and AssociatesFrederick, Md.www.knight-sky.com

MTN Government ServicesLeesburg, Va.www.mtngs.com

Production and Satellite ServicesVan Nuys, Calif.www.pssiglobal.com

RitenetRockville, Md.www.ritenet.com

SATCOM GlobalChandler, Ariz.www.satcomglobal.com

Segovia(now Inmarsatgov)Herndon, Va.www.inmarsatgov.com

SES Government SolutionsMcLean, Va.www.ses-gs.com

SpacenetMcLean, Va.www.spacenet.com

Telecommunication SystemsAnnapolis, Md.www.telecomsys.com

TrustComm Stafford, Va.www.trustcomm.com

UltiSatGaithersburg, Md.www.ultisat.com

XTARHerndon, Va.www.xtar.com


A Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) program named for an ancient fortress is using big data analytics to develop and strengthen pro-tections for the place where the most important treasures are stored in the modern world—the cyber-realm.

The Acropolis initiative being carried out by DISA and other Department of Defense agencies is creating a big data cloud environment where the mas-sive amounts of information collected daily about both cyber-attacks and network performance can be stored, analyzed and shared.

cloud EnvironmEnt for Big data analytics aims to strEngthEn cyBErsEcurity and nEtworK PErformancE throughout dod.

By harrison donnElly

mit Editor

MIT 18.1 | 9www.MIT-kmi.com

The effort will strengthen cybersecurity and network perfor-mance throughout DoD, developers say, while also serving as a model for those seeking to use big data analytics to improve a wide range of other department functions, from finance to health care.

For Mark Orndorff, DISA program executive officer for mission assurance and NetOps and chief information assurance executive, the initiative springs from his agency’s role and responsibility to operate and defend a large portion of the DoD infrastructure.

“We own and operate the DoD backbone networks, and we have a number of the core enterprise computing centers. All of that infrastructure produces data that is useful for identifying cyber-attacks,” Orndorff said.

In the past, he explained, that type of data was collected into specific commercial products targeted to specific functions. “What we’re doing now is evolving away from stovepiped solu-tions to an approach where we leverage the whole concept of big data analytics, and bring a variety of data sources into this big data cloud environment. Then we build analytics on top of that to provide the functionality and situational awareness that we need for both cyber-defense and the general operational require-ments of network performance.”

The current initiative is especially important as DoD con-tinues to develop the Joint Information Environment (JIE), the overarching information architecture being developed to facilitate the convergence of multiple DoD networks into one common shared global network. “As the services and DISA share roles for operations and defense, having an analytic platform thand at gives us all the visibility and analytic tools that we need

for the various roles and responsibilities becomes even more critical,” Orndorff noted.

Officials also emphasize that Acropolis represents a sharable version being shared with community, and is already in use by hundreds of people across the department. Said Orndorff: “This is not a DISA effort, but DISA working in support of the JIE in close partnership with the services to establish the specific details about the big data architecture. As we build the environment, the services will directly benefit from the cloud architecture.

“We’re also working in collaboration with other parts of DISA so that they can take the architecture we’re implementing for cyber-defense and use it for other operational requirements unrelated to cyber,” he continued. “It gives them the oppor-tunity to benefit from the work we’re doing in establishing a standard architecture for cyber-defense. Across all operational requirements, there are bound to be other people who could benefit. So we’re trying to make sure that the whole DISA fam-ily has the opportunity to apply the results where they make sense.”

DISA is also working closely with its Fort Meade, Md., neigh-bor, the National Security Agency, leveraging its expertise in big data analytics.

“Their approach has been consistent with ours, in that we both want as much as we can to leverage the open source community,” Orndorff observed. “It’s not a Fort Meade govern-ment architecture, but DISA, NSA and others working to build off of the same open source technology used by Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others that are working in the big data space.”

Keys to Big Data Analytics(Editor’s note: Following are five key points underlying big data analytics, as provided by Mark Orndorff, program executive officer for mission assurance and NetOps and chief information assurance executive for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).)

• Establish a cloud-based architecture capable of utilizing DISA’s large data sets to support the DISA mission to operate and defend NIPRNet and SIPRNet.

• Provide a common data presentation layer for situational awareness that unifies the interface and visualization across multiple technologies, data sources and toolsets.

• Facilitate data correlation between the operate and defend domains as well as the exploit and attack missions.

• Posture DISA to align and support the Joint Information Environment EOC/SSA (NETOPS/CND) infrastructure.

• Establish ability for multiple teams across the Department of Defense to develop analytics against a common cloud architecture that can be shared by agencies. Create a common development environment that provides opportunity to collaborate and reuse capabilities and analytics.


Still, officials acknowledge that working across such a diverse community poses challenges. “If you’re trying to evolve and innovate quickly, and at the same time bring on board the entire DoD, getting the right balance is a tough challenge—not a technical challenge, but a matter of integrating a diverse set of technologies that are evolving quickly, and doing that in a way that doesn’t leave people behind in keeping up with the changes in technology,” he said.

contract comPEtition

Acropolis will be the subject of competitive activity in 2014, since the current contract with Northrop Grumman to operate the environment and sensors has moved into its last option year.

That competitive re-compete will represent another stage in the life of a capability that has actually been in place in some form for nearly 15 years. It got a new name not long ago following a DoD-wide contest, which selected that of the majestic Athenian outcropping.

The precursor to Acropolis was an environment that offered a collection of commercial cyber-defense tools. It provided an environment that was off the production network, where both classified and unclassified analytic techniques could be used to examine data being collected across the enterprise.

“We still have the set of capabilities that were there in previ-ous years, but we’ve expanded on that to include the big data environment,” Orndorff explained. “It’s now taking the off-net analytic environment and growing it out to support a larger vol-ume of data coming in, and a wider range of analytic capabilities against the data in the analytic environment.”

The contract will cover the normal operations and main-tenance of the analytic environment, such as system admin-istration, application support, configuration management, round-the-clock support desk and user access. Development of analytic capabilities, however, would not be included.

“A core part of the vision is that that environment will have analytics that are developed across the entire community,” Orndorff said. “It will have users from across the community, and be able to leverage development capacity using the stan-dards and architecture that DISA defines. Then the services, NSA, DISA or industry could all build analytics that could oper-

ate in that environment. We want multiple teams from different organizations to have the ability to develop analytics inside of this environment.”

Orndorff closed by emphasizing two points, beginning with the fact that not every function or capability will be supported by big data analyt-ics. There will still be a space for more traditional structured data analysis and other technologies.

“Secondly, I want to emphasize the point with industry that we are not trying to get to a point where the government itself has to develop every analytic tool that we use. What we would like to do is to move to a place where we have a big data

analytic platform that allows us to support not only analytics that we develop, but also capabilities that industry can provide and are compatible with the open source big data environment.

“We’ve seen progress with industry, where some vendors that used to have their own proprietary database have moved to deliver capabilities that would be compatible with the envi-ronment we’re talking about,” Orndorff continued. “The more momentum we can build in that direction, the better it will be for all of us. We’re not trying to exclude industry, but to drive it in a direction that will make sense for all of us in the long term.” O

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For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at [email protected] or search our online archives for

related stories at www.mit-kmi.com.

Mark Orndorff


(Editor’s Note: Following is one of a series of articles outlining various perspectives on the challenges and oppor-tunities for the military and intelligence communities presented by “big data” in all its forms.)

While organizations struggle with the heavy demands of acquiring, storing and analyzing big data, the real challenge may be in making sure that their data is big enough.

Many big data efforts and technologies, while enjoying some project success, are failing to reach full effectiveness, accord-ing to Bobby Caudill, global government program director for Teradata, because they are dismissing out of hand the even bigger picture—all of their data.

As an industry veteran, Caudill brings a somewhat skeptical eye to the current excitement about big data. “It’s one of those buzzwords that have sprung up over the years in the technology business. I’ve been in the technology business for 30 years, and I’ve seen buzzwords come and go,” he said. “Companies and industry experts are trying to characterize and market it differently in order to get asso-ciated with it, because it’s perceived as new. But my perspective is while there are some new characteristics in the world of data, this isn’t radically new. Data is just doing what all technology has been doing for years: getting bigger, faster and more diverse. What’s really changed, though, are some of the technologies that have cropped up to do something with it. This is where I see cause to get excited.”

Nevertheless, the potential benefits are huge, Caudill said, provided that users take an expansive enough view of the kinds and amount of data to maintain. “For some people, a piece of data may only be useful for a couple of days. So in their mind, that data is dead after that period of time. But if you talk to someone else, someone with a different mission, they might still see value in that data.”

In the world of cyber-defense, for example, the timeframe is critical. “If your job is to catch an intruder as they penetrate your network, your data gets stale very fast,” he noted. “You watch the network traffic, and the data doesn’t mean much after a few days. But if you are in forensics, and your job is to assess the damage of a discovered attack, one that may have been there for 18 months, it’s not surprising you’re faced with a difficult

many Big data Efforts fail to rEach full EffEctivEnEss BEcausE thEy don’t taKE advantagE of all of thEir data.

By harrison donnElly

mit Editor

12 | MIT 18.1 www.MIT-kmi.com

challenge if your policy is to flush data after 30 days.

“This is the kind of thing I see happening over and over,” Caudill continued. “People understandably get wrapped up in their own spe-cific use of information and the analytics around it, and they neglect to consider how a piece of data that is seem-ingly worthless to them may be the key to a valuable insight for someone else. Obviously there is no possibility of sav-ing every single bit of data ever collected. But, for instance, in case of cyber, you have to save a lot more than you ever thought possible.”

This challenge will not be solved by any single piece of technology, Caudill argued, but rather by a suite of integrated technolo-gies, deployed at the enterprise level, capa-ble of putting data where it needs to go, in relevance to its importance and the risk of not having that information, and using the data in place. “A positive trend I’m seeing in

big data projects is they are recognizing that some data needs to be accessible in a matter of seconds, while it’s O.K. if it takes a few hours to get other data, because it’s a different mission. This suggests an understanding of the value of integrating previ-ously disparate technologies into a cohesive data analytics environment.

“Over the years, technologists have been so focused on particular projects that they tend to put it into silos just to be able to get their arms around it. But technology now exists so that you don’t have to silo informa-tion, and can actually integrate it and pull it all together,” he added.

Caudill cited the case of the state of Michigan, a Teradata customer, which began slowly by integrating just a few sources of data, but then over time continued to expand its enterprise data warehouse until it now covers a wide range of state activi-ties. One example of how effective that

approach can be came from the state office responsible for child support enforcement, which was having trouble getting the cor-rect addresses for those who were delin-quent in their payments. Comparing the names of that largely male group with the database of those applying for hunting and fishing licenses, however, the agency was able to get up-to-date information for many.

“When they integrated the data sources, they found these guys. This is an exam-ple of the type of questions that can be answered when data is integrated,” Caudill said. “Imagine what an intelligence analyst or frontline observer could find if they have access to integrated data that they didn’t before, and a discovery platform where they can ask simple questions without having to be a technologist.” O

For more information, contact MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly at [email protected]

or search our online archives for related stories at www.mit-kmi.com.

Bobby Caudill


Tablet Designed for Easy Enterprise Integration

The latest member of Panasonic’s Toughpad family of rugged, enterprise-grade tablets, the Toughpad FZ-M1 is a rugged 7-inch fanless tablet with a 4th generation Intel Core i5 processor. Running Windows 8.1 Pro, the Toughpad FZ-M1 can be easily incorporated into enterprise and government environments. With a broad range of configuration options available, it can be customized to meet the unique needs of highly mobile professionals in various markets such as field services and sales, retail, supply chain and logistics, and government. The Toughpad FZ-M1 is designed to improve productivity and efficiency in a host of profes-sional scenario. Unlike many consumer tablets, it is built for easy integration into existing IT infrastructures and for smooth deployments and ongoing support.

Terminals to Transmit Emergency Messages to Aircrews

The Air Force has awarded Raytheon, provider of fielded Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite terminals that protect the military’s most sensitive information, a $134.4 million contract to develop a terminal that transmits emergency messages to aircrews during nuclear and non-nuclear missions. The Global Aircrew Strategic Network Terminal is part of the nuclear command and control system that allows the president to direct and manage U.S. forces. The terminals will be installed at fixed sites, including wing command posts, nuclear

task forces and munitions support squadrons, and forward deployed mobile support teams. Fielding is expected to begin in fiscal 2017. Raytheon is actively producing AEHF terminals for the Army, Navy and Air Force. The terminals have demonstrated interoperable communica-tions using the AEHF satellite’s Extended Data Rate (XDR) waveform, one of the military’s most complex, low probability of detection, low probability of interception, anti-jam waveforms. XDR moves data more than five times faster than legacy satellite systems.

Advanced Threat Protection Solution

Fortifies the Network

Blue Coat Systems has unveiled the new Blue Coat Advanced Threat Protection solution, which is purpose-built to bridge the gap in security organizations between day-to-day operations, incident contain-ment and resolution. The new solution is the first to deliver a comprehensive advanced threat protection lifecycle defense that fortifies the network by blocking known threats, proactively detecting unknown and already-present malware and automating best practices for incident containment post intrusion. This makes it possible for day-to-day security opera-tions and advanced security teams to work together to protect and empower the busi-ness. The new Blue Coat Advanced Threat Protection solution automates and aligns best practices and technologies with busi-ness processes and policy, so the entire security organization can rapidly detect, contain and resolve advanced threats in a repeatable and consistent way. The solu-tion seamlessly combines local and global threat intelligence to turn unknown threats into known threats at each stage in the incident lifecycle, thereby increasing the overall effectiveness of the security infra-structure.

Contract Funds Inflatable Satellite AntennasThe Army Project Manager, Warfighter Information Network-

Tactical, Product Manager Satellite Communications, Commercial SATCOM Terminal Program Office, has awarded GATR Technologies a five-year contract with a ceiling value of $440 million. The contract will enable the Army, Marine Corps, and other commands and services to procure GATR’s WGS certified Inflatable Satellite Antennas (ISA) and associated hardware, services and support. The key innovation of GATR’s antenna is a flexible parabolic dish mounted within an inflat-able sphere, reducing weight and packaged volume by as much as 80 percent and thereby improving the agility of deployed military and disaster response personnel. The GATR ISA also costs less to procure than conventional deployable systems, and dramatically cuts trans-portation expenses due to its lightweight design. Finally, the larger dish size enables more efficient use of satellite bandwidth capacity, increasing bandwidth for users and allowing more users to communi-cate simultaneously.


Data ByteS

DoD Begins Deployment of Unclassified Mobility Capability

The Department of Defense has begun deploying the first version of its unclassi-fied mobility capability, and plans to build out capacity to support up to 100,000 users by the end of the fiscal year, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has announced. Since the announcement of the DoD Mobility Implementation Plan, DISA as the lead agency for the DoD Mobility Capability has made substantial progress toward delivering unclassified mobile capability to the department. The program currently supports 1,800 unclassified mobile devices including iPad 3 and 4, iPhone 4S and 5, Samsung 10.1 tablets and Samsung

3S, and Motorola RAZR devices, with partic-ipation from the combatant commands, services and agencies throughout DoD. The program also supports 80,000 BlackBerry phones. DoD Mobility Unclassified Capability users in DISA recently began the phased transition to initial release 1.0 capabilities, including the mobile device management system, mobile application store, approved devices list, supported cellular access, PKI support, and transition of approved applica-tions and enterprise services for mobility, including DoD Enterprise Email, DoD global address list, tier 2/3 service desk support, and Defense Connect Online.

High Performance Computing Enables Adaptive Learning

The High Performance Systems Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate has issued an order to GE Intelligent Platforms for a High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) system that will enable the development and deployment of advanced neuromorphic architectures and algorithms for adaptive learning, large-scale dynamic data analytics and reasoning. The system takes advantage of NVIDIA GPU accelerators, leveraging the highly parallel nature of the technology to deliver maximum performance. The GE system will provide real-time processing for high bandwidth data derived from RF sensors. It is designed to support the Department of Defense’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program, and will be used for the development of next-generation radar programs such as Gotcha wide-area synthetic aper-ture radar. The GPU-based HPEC system is housed in a 6U OpenVPX rack mount chassis and is capable of delivering 20 teraflops (20 trillion floating point operations per second) in computing horsepower. The system is scalable and can be expanded to include addi-tional racks and compute nodes.

Small Link 16 Terminal Receives Security

Certification

Rockwell Collins’ next generation TacNet Tactical Radio (TTR) has received final National Security Agency certification to Top Secret, clearing the way to bring situational awareness to all warfighters through the smallest form factor, standalone Link 16 terminal. TTR features small size, selectable power output, superior range, integration friendly design requiring no air cooling and adaptability to any warfare environment. TTR is integral to protecting the force by virtue of providing warfighters with a common operating picture through Link 16 networked communications. Platforms and users that can benefit from the radio include unmanned aerial systems, rotary wing aircraft, forward air controllers, military vehicles, mobile and transport-able ground stations and small maritime assets that have not previously had access to Link 16 capability.

Contract Supports Marines’ Tactical Air Operations Control

The Marine Corps has awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to provide post-production life cycle support for mobile command, control and communica-tions systems through September 2014. Under the $7.3 million contract, Northrop Grumman will provide life cycle support of the AN/TYQ-23(V)4 Tactical Air Operations Module (TAOM) and related subsystems. The AN/TYQ-23(V)4 TAOM is a transportable command, control and communications facility that works in conjunction with the AN/TYQ-87(V)2 Sector Anti-Air Warfare Facility and peripheral equipment for surveil-lance, identification, threat evaluation, weapons coordination, airspace management and communications capabilities. It serves as the hub of the Marine Corps Tactical Air Operations Center, which is the principal airspace control and management agency for the Marines. Each AN/TYQ-23(V)4 contains mission-essential equipment such as computers as well as digital voice communications systems required for command and control functions. Under the new contract, Northrop Grumman will help to sustain and upgrade the circuit card assemblies, software and hardware of the command and control systems that support the Tactical Air Operations Center. Significant software improvements will be made to the Multi-Radar Tracker and Data Communications Unit.


Compiled by Kmi media Group staff

Douglas K. Wiltsie assumed command of the Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) on October 5, 2011. His responsibilities include program management of more than 60 Department of Defense and Army acquisition programs across the business, war fighting and enterprise information environment mis-sion areas. The PEO EIS organization consists of approximately 2,650 military, civilian and contractor staff around the world, and executes approximately $4 billion per year.

Prior to his assignment as PEO EIS, Wiltsie was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in June 2008 and served as the deputy pro-gram executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors until October 2011. He also has held a wide range of acquisition and technology positions in ISR and other fields.

Wiltsie holds an M.S. in national resource strategy from the Indus-trial College of the Armed Forces and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech.

Q: Two years into the office, what recent EIS accomplishment are you most pleased with, and what’s the biggest goal you are working toward now?

A: Continuing to provide the best capabilities possible to our Army and joint customers is the most important mission that we have, and that won’t change. However, surveying the landscape in front of me, my focus this year is really on network modernization, ensuring that the enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) remain on track to allow the Army to be audit-ready by 2017, and to continue to support the biometrics mission as the Department of Defense’s posture shifts.

Without question, one of our most important focus areas right now is network modernization. The Army’s LandWarNet 2020 vision, the foundation for our network modernization efforts, is built on three lines of effort: network capacity—connect and operate; enterprise ser-vices—share; and NetOps and security—access and defend.

Our network evolution is a comprehensive, collaborative effort to improve the IT capabilities of the Army around the globe. We’re able to accomplish this monumental task through true teamwork between PEO EIS, Army CIO/G-6, Army Network Enterprise Technology Com-mand (NETCOM), Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER), and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). When we are finished, we will have more bandwidth, better security and improved robustness neces-sary to support secretary of the Army and chief of staff of the Army milestones for training and collaboration.

From an acquisition perspective, our network modernization ini-tiative has proven that it is possible to meet or exceed performance, save money, and even accelerate implementation schedules. It is by no means easy, but we have been successful because we are willing

to change traditional approaches. For example, we used a commodity acquisition strategy to save over 60 percent on core routers and node switches. From a joint architecture perspective, the Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) initiative, which I will highlight a little bit later, moves the Army toward closer aligning with the evolving DoD Joint Information Environment (JIE) that is scheduled to begin imple-mentation in fiscal year 2015. With network, data and user security built into the architecture from the ground up, this next generation network simultaneously ensures the security and availability of Army computing assets.

I am pleased to say that our ERPs continue to be successful. To date, the General Funds Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) has been fully deployed across the Army. GFEBS successfully completed FY13 year-end closing, with more than $118 billion in funds obligated within GFEBS and 65 million financial transactions processed. The Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS-Army) is in full fielding, and the Logistics Modernization Program (LMP) Increment 1 is fully fielded and fully operational. We’re looking forward to the continued evolution of newer ERPs like the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army (IPPS-A), which will consolidate soldier records and pay actions in one place to improve accuracy and ease of use. IPPS-A increment II will build on the program’s Increment 1 success, bringing us closer to the goal of one authoritative and comprehensive source of personnel and pay information for all soldiers, and alleviating the Army’s reliance on

Douglas K. WiltsieProgram Executive Officer

Enterprise Information Systems U.S. Army


Network ModernizerImproving the IT Capabilities of the Army Around the Globe

Q&AQ&A

more than 50 stovepiped systems that do not efficiently share informa-tion with one another.

We’re also looking forward to the new functionality that will be introduced through LMP Increment 2. This new increment of LMP will bring the automation down to the shop floor level and provide new capabilities to support expanded industrial base requirements including item unique identification, using the SAP Complex Assembly Manufacturing solution. Finally, we’re pleased with the progress that we are making on new solutions for a consolidated method for the Army to conduct contract writing and expect to see much more on this in the coming year.

Biometrics has proven to be a game-changing technology in sup-port of our military’s missions, and, as the DoD lead for biometrics acquisition, I am proud of what we have accomplished and excited about where the technology is heading. The current system collected, processed, stored, shared and matched roughly 2.3 million biomet-ric records supporting military and homeland security operations. These activities positively matched over 600,000 identities, including thousands of matches of individuals identified on the DoD biometrics-enabled watch list. This, in and of itself, is quite an accomplishment, but we were able to do this while maintaining an operational avail-ability of greater than 99.2 percent. Our system is ready and able to support operations nearly 100 percent of the time. To me, this is the true test of a system making a difference on the ground to our soldiers in the field.

Biometrics is much more than a battlefield capability. As we con-tinue to draw down in combat zones, we are working with our federal agency partners, including the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and State, to leverage the technology and capabilities that we have already developed through 13 years of war and apply them to new needs such as access control, humanitarian assistance and law enforce-ment. Our biometrics capabilities can streamline, ensure security and improve safety for these efforts and many more. For the future, soldier support will continue to be our focus and we’re working, after years of rapid acquisition, to more effectively align biometrics efforts across DoD to make sure that the services get the capabilities that they need; eliminate redundancies; establish a single point of entry for require-ments; and ensure integration.

Q: Among the more than 60 DoD and Army acquisition programs you manage, are there one or two that have impressed you with giant technology leaps?

A: While not a single program, the network modernization initia-tives are remarkable and have only been possible through a true team effort across a number of our program offices, including the PEO CIO, DCATS, I3C2 and ES. The network modernization team successfully designed and is currently building a single, secure and survivable MPLS network for the Army, effectively building capacity. This team is now working on building joint Regional Security Stacks (RSSs) that will address the netops and security line of effort in LandWarNet 2020.

We are taking a phased approach to Army network modernization and are currently transitioning Army Knowledge Online (AKO) to next-generation enterprise services, or AKO 2.0, that will save money, improve effectiveness and upgrade security. Following the Army’s successful migration of 1.4 million email accounts to DoD Enterprise Email (DEE), we are confident that the Army migration to other enter-prise services, such as unified capabilities and VoIP, will be extremely successful and will pave the way for additional services. Together, these

initiatives will provide the necessary foundation to enable the delivery of enterprise services to Army users.

Outside of network modernization, we develop and field a wide range of products and services that support the soldier, including sys-tems to better manage installations, personnel compensation, equip-ment accountability, communications and computer infrastructure, as well as serving as the single manager of biometric capabilities. I’m not exaggerating when I say that our systems support every soldier, every day, everywhere.

Across the PEO, however, our programs are making strides to support a faster, more effective, efficient and capable Army. I am con-tinually impressed with not only the leaps in technology that we are making, but also the enormous success we are having from an acqui-sition perspective, even in this time of constrained resources. When people ask what PEO EIS does, I like to tell them, ‘The Army runs on PEO EIS.’ We find solutions to the Army’s IT challenges.

A great example of this was the recent blanket purchase agreement for Google and Microsoft services. While much of the Army successfully transitioned to DEE, organizations with special network requirements, like the Army Recruiting Command and the Army Corps of Engineers, were unable to migrate. To bridge this gap in capability, the Army estab-lished agreements to provide email, collaboration tools, document stor-age, enterprise content management, unified capabilities and mobile access through Google and Microsoft commercial cloud services.

Led by our Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions program (CHESS), the agreements were competed against the exist-ing General Services Administration email-as-a-service agreements to enhance terms and security requirements, while maximizing the buy-ing power for current and future requirements. The agreements were developed in coordination with the CIO/G-6 and DoD Enterprise Soft-ware Initiative, and will maintain identity management as a govern-ment function, leveraging the existing DISA solution. This is the first critical step toward meeting the DoD cloud computing strategy goal of using commercial cloud services in the department’s multi-provider enterprise cloud environment.

Shifting gears slightly to the ERP systems, I am pleased at the progress we have made over the past two years since I came onboard and am confident we will continue to make progress toward the 2017 audit readiness goal. Since I arrived, GFEBS achieved full deployment, GCSS-Army was awarded a full deployment decision, General Fund Enterprise Business Systems Sensitive Activities and LMP Increment 2 both achieved Milestone B decisions, and IPPS-A is currently working to a achieve a Milestone C decision. Audit readiness remains an impor-tant effort for the Army, and I am optimistic that we are going to meet our goals and provide the Army with the capabilities to make better, faster decisions to enhance mission success.

Q: How is the regional network security effort progressing, and how are you balancing providing more bandwidth to the Army while main-taining cybersecurity?

A: As I mentioned before, every day we are making significant progress, and I am really pleased with how far we have come and where we are heading. Balancing bandwidth and security is the foundation of the LandWarNet 2020 vision that I talked about earlier. DISA is leading the RSS acquisition and we, along with CIO/G-6, NETCOM, ARCYBER and DISA, are providing support through lessons learned from the MPLS and EUB/ADN procurements and knowledge of security requirements and components.


Providing increased bandwidth and maintaining cybersecurity are not mutually exclusive. In order for the Army and DoD to effectively deliver enterprise services, we need a robust, scalable MPLS network to increase bandwidth demands and prevent the establishment of sec-ondary and tertiary network infrastructures to meet mission needs. In turn, the upgraded network must be protected by an equally robust, scalable and consistent security architecture. The fundamental change in the Army security architecture will reduce the overall Army threat exposure, improve operations and maintenance, and enhance end-to-end performance for Army users. For us, the real focus is now on implementation. The team of PEO EIS, CIO/G-6, NETCOM, ARCYBER and DISA are collectively responsible for installing, configuring and testing the various aspects of network modernization and we are all driving hard to get there as quickly as possible. We have a single, inte-grated master schedule that we use to track our progress, what’s next and when. It is critical to ensuring that we are moving and operating as a team focused on support to our Army.

Q: After speaking at both the AFCEA DC and Belvoir luncheons last fall, what are some concerns you gathered from industry, and what does PEO EIS have in the works to address those issues?

A: Industry is understandably concerned with budget constraints and the potential impacts to existing contracts and future opportunities. I am committed to ensuring that, regardless of the changes to the budget or to scheduling, our users continue to receive the critical capabilities that our systems provide without interruption. This means that we will still require innovation from industry as we continue to improve and streamline the IT acquisition process. To that end, we are working toward a goal of proactive contract management, which is critical to decreasing the cycle time required to award contracts and to obligate funds. We’re working with the Army Contracting Command (ACC) to improve the process, saving both time and money. We also want to foster an ongoing conversation with industry to give us an opportunity to see what innovative technology is already available in the market, as well as to provide industry advanced insight into our needs and where we are looking to evolve in the future.

We’ve also heard from industry that the current Army policy related to conferences has been detrimental to open communication, and their concern mirrors our own. In years past, conferences have afforded us an opportunity to meet with our industry partners to learn about new technologies, discuss ongoing challenges and present upcoming opportunities. In the absence of these opportunities, we have begun hosting industry information exchanges, held on post at Fort Belvoir, Va. We have identified topics that are relevant either through upcoming contract actions, expected milestones or potential changes in require-ments, and then brought together the PEO EIS leadership to share our planned way ahead with industry. I really view this as a frank exchange between our PMs and industry to ask, ‘What am I missing?’ ‘How can I improve the process?’ and ‘Do you have something that will help me solve this problem down the road?’ These information exchanges have yielded great results, and we have plans to focus on our ERP systems, our enterprise services and network modernization.

Q: What have you found to be the toughest challenge in adapting to the new fiscal environment?

A: I think it’s important to understand that the new environment we’re facing is being influenced by much more than just fiscal constraints. In

addition to continuing resolutions and sequestration cuts, we’re under-taking a strategic shift into the Pacific theater and a drawdown. I think the two biggest challenges that we have faced have been workforce morale and development and deployment velocity.

There is no question that the uncertainty of the furlough and bud-get has had an impact on the workforce. Our dedicated Army civilians and contractors have experienced a great deal of tumult in the last few months due to furloughs and the government shutdown, and it has affected their daily lives. And also significantly, it has impacted their families. However, through it all, my team has not stopped rising to meet the challenge, and I could not be more proud of all that we have been able to accomplish together.

To our programs, the real effect of the budget uncertainty is in the velocity of development and deployment. While our mission and efforts won’t change, the timeframe in which those efforts will be executed could be impacted. Our PMs have done an excellent job in planning and adapting over the past year to a very dynamic environment and have a keen understanding of where we need to go and what we need to accomplish for mission success. We are conducting ongoing analysis to assess that potential impact and we have plans in place to minimize the impact of budget uncertainties and future furloughs on our users, our systems and our teams.

Q: Will the pace of executing $3.5 billion a year continue, or is it likely to shrink in the future?

A: The future is really uncertain. As we wait for the new budget to be introduced, we’re still planning for a number of notable contract awards and RFPs releases throughout FY14. We are striving to ensure the right systems are developed at the right cost to meet soldiers’ needs, but of course we have had to adjust expectations and priorities to accomplish this. We’re working daily with our ACC partners to begin planning and execution as early as possible. Across the enterprise, there has been a large push to reduce service contracts. Where we used to rely heavily on contractors for many of our important functions, we are now working to leverage existing talents within our workforce to right-size the orga-nization and still accomplish the mission, ideally with no interruption to the customer. As we continue to plan for the future, the question remains: How can we balance a changing workforce structure while rapidly developing and deploying critical capabilities to the soldier?

Q: Is there another Network Modernization Information Exchange planned for FY14? What are some ways you’re looking to spur indus-try innovation in the coming year?

A: Absolutely. Our information exchanges have been eye-opening to me, and I have every intention of continuing to hold these throughout the year. In 2013 we hosted two info exchanges focused on network modernization and biometrics. We received enthusiastic responses to both events, which drew standing-room-only crowds and overwhelm-ingly positive and constructive feedback for the programs. In February, we held info exchanges for CHESS and for the ERP systems, both at Fort Belvoir. In March, we will be hosting an Enterprise Services info exchange and will continue to host these events regularly. Keep checking our website at www.eis.army.mil for event and registration information.

In terms of spurring innovation, the information exchanges are really focused on the mid- to longer-term efforts. We know, for instance, that the ERPs will be fully fielded by 2017. So the question


becomes, once fielded, what is next. Similarly, network modernization is a multi-phased, multi-year effort. Our goal is to talk to industry now about where we think we are headed, where we need to be and when, so that they have a clear understanding of potential areas of research and development investment that could potentially pay off in the future. Similarly, we’ve updated our webpage to provide more information about our programs and services, upcoming procure-ments, coverage of EIS in the news media, a link to our Twitter feed, and news from around the PEO. In addition, there is a section for white paper submissions and we really appreciate receiving those and reaching out to companies that way. Moving forward, I really see open communication about our future strategy—where we want to go and when—as critical to spurring innovation for the next generation of business IT systems.

Q: Information exchanges, the newly designed website and Twitter feed are all great forums for staying on top of the latest technology trends to support the Army’s needs. How important is it for PEO EIS to lead the way in these efforts?

A: PEO EIS is the Army’s enterprisewide technical leader for busi-ness information systems, providing soldiers with the decisive edge through information dominance. We rapidly deliver IT-based capabili-ties to the Army that are cost effective and easy to use. It’s critical that we communicate this to our customers, stakeholders, Congress and the media, as well as to the general public. Social media is a great resource for getting the message out quickly and with the greatest impact, but I am also committed to meeting industry and stakeholders face to face, where I feel the most important conversations take place. The info exchanges have been a jumping-off point for so many great ideas for collaboration, and I’m excited about the possibilities to come as we strengthen our communications and broaden our reach.

Q: What are some of the key steps your organization is taking in the area of satellite communications toward the overall goal of network modernization?

A: Satellite communications is a crucial component of the Army mis-sion around the globe; it is what allows us to be a global presence. We work closely with our DISA partners to ensure that we continue procuring terminals that meet the critical capabilities required by the customers. Our close partnership with stakeholders across DoD has helped us identify the most important attributes needed in the field to accomplish missions regardless of environment. Our challenge is to provide these needed capabilities and functionality while reducing life cycle costs. Through PM Defense Communications and Army Trans-mission Systems, we have significantly increased throughput and access, improved our ability to protect information against threats, and ensured full interoperability.

The new SATCOM systems, like our Modernization of Enterprise Terminals (MET) program, employ current technology, such as IP, to meet these requirements and operate with the expanding Wideband Global Satellites constellation. The MET replaces the approximately 100 legacy terminals by combining X-band and Ka-band frequency capabilities into a single terminal, which reduces overall operation, maintenance and sustainment costs. The legacy terminals being replaced by MET have been operational at worldwide locations for up to 40 years, so this impact is really significant and will extend the life of enterprise terminals well beyond 2015.

Q: What benefits and challenges do you see in efforts by the PM DCATS to develop digital intermediate frequencies and migrate to IP services?

A: Digital IF offers enormous benefits to the buyers and users of SAT-COM terminals, beginning with performance, cost and size. Digital IF development addresses performance challenges that cannot be solved with conventional analog IFs. In terms of cost savings, the necessary complement of mixed-signal equipment in our terminals— equip-ment containing both analog and digital components—is reduced in favor of more digital-only equipment. This saves on costs imme-diately, while putting more terminal equipment on a long-term path to further size and cost reductions. Digital IF addresses immediate SATCOM terminal floor-space challenges, with additional size reduc-tion planned for the future. Another important benefit stems from analog IF systems inherently limiting SATCOM terminal bandwidths and modem counts. Our digital IF development approach eliminates these restrictions. Digital IF not only improves performance while reducing cost and size, but also offers a future growth path to SATCOM terminals not otherwise available.

Application of digital IF to SATCOM terminal architectures requires high levels of digital signal processing expertise, along with a clear understanding of SATCOM terminals and their specific challenges. DCATS is collaborating closely with DoD SATCOM stakeholders to implement the digital IF vision. The focus of our joint DoD collaboration is the development and adoption of an open commercial standard for SATCOM terminal digital IF, enabling larger vendor pools while ensuring plug-and-play interoperability between manufacturers.

As you know, across DoD we are mandated to migrate to IP. The immediate benefits will be to remove old and outdated legacy systems that have been in the field for years and are becoming more and more costly to maintain. These systems need to be replaced with new, state-of-the-art products that can handle higher data rates needed to meet the increasing bandwidth demand. The challenge we’re already facing from an acquisition perspective is keeping pace with customer demand. We’re thinking creatively within the existing acquisition poli-cies and practices to procure systems faster and leverage our buying power to get the best price possible through contracts like our CTS contract, which is a multiple-award, five-year, IDIQ contract. The contract is a hybrid incorporating FFP, CR, and T&M line items, and covers the entire PEO EIS communication and transmission system requirements. The performance-based contract will get the capabili-ties into the field faster and with unwavering attention to the bottom line.

Q: What closing thoughts do you have for the soldiers and civilians at PEO EIS?

A: The recent furloughs and government shutdown have cast a shadow over the beginning of the new fiscal year. However, we are all back to work, committed to the mission, with eyes toward a brighter year. My workforce has set an excellent example through their dedicated service and sacrifice. Soldiers rely on us to provide the support neces-sary for them to perform their vital missions, and I am very proud of every member of the EIS team for meeting this challenge. I want to personally thank each and every member of the PEO EIS organization for their unwavering dedication and support to the mission. The Army runs on EIS! O


nEw army Program offErs two comPEting EntErPrisE licEnsing dEals and allows units to sElEct thE onE BEst suitEd to thEir nEEds.By KarEn E. thuErmEr, mit corrEsPondEnt

For federal agencies, enterprise software licensing agreements make sense: By leveraging the purchasing of common tools for federal departments, bureau and agencies, they can achieve significant cost savings.

“When you look at a limited number of user licenses from the manufacturer then at 100,000 user licenses, the cost can be 70 to 80 percent less,” reported Robert Deitz II, president and chief executive officer of Government Technology Solutions.

But one size doesn’t always fit all, so in some cases the savings can actually be detrimental. “The potential problem comes in when there are different needs between each departments, agencies or groups,” Deitz explained. “Take Army intelligence, for example. Its requirement may have an entirely different set of requirements from, say Army logistics. After all, one is involved with moving supplies, equipment and food, while the other is concerned with spying on groups such as al-Qaida.”

A new software licensing program announced by the Army is seek-ing to resolve the dilemma between uniform and specialized needs, however, by offering two competing enterprise licensing deals and allowing units to select the one best suited to their needs.

While the federal government had been requiring departments and agencies to purchase enterprise contracts under what some have deemed a “one size fits all” approach, the pendulum appears to swung back a bit with the Army’s establishment of two Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPA) that offer email, collaboration, information sharing and mobile access through commercial cloud services.

The BPAs separately offer Microsoft’s enterprise version of Office 365, as well as Google Apps for Gov-ernment, and are available to all Department of Defense services, mission partners and agencies. The Google and Microsoft resellers will each be eligible to sign up to 50,000 seat licenses.

“What I like seeing with this Army agreement is a move toward decentralization,” Deitz remarked.

Led by the Computer Hardware, Enterprise Soft-ware and Solutions program office within the Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information

Systems (PEO-EIS), the agreements were competed against existing General Services Administration (GSA) email-as-a-service agree-ments. Army officials say the competition will enable them to build on the past efforts of GSA, enhancing terms and unique Department of Defense security requirements, while maximizing the buying power of DoD for current and future requirements.

The Army characterizes the award of the base agreement and initial order as the first critical step toward meeting the DoD cloud computing strategy goal of using commercial cloud services in the department’s multi-provider enterprise cloud environment. The pro-grams have a one-year base period with four one-year options.

The agreements were developed in coordination with the Army Chief Information Office and DoD Enterprise Software Initiative, and will maintain identity management as a government function, leveraging the existing Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) solution.

The initiative is being led by PEO EIS, which is respon-sible for providing infrastructure and information man-agement systems to the entire Army. This includes enterprise-level IT services that enable secure end-to-end com-munication across the organization. Under the agreement, the PEO-EIS has purchased licenses for the two cloud-based services.

The BPAs are intended for use by organizations unable to participate in Defense Enterprise Email (DEE), including portions of the Army Recruiting Command and the Army

Corps of Engineers. Through the agreements, Dell Federal Systems will provide a solution based on Microsoft Office 365, and DLT Solutions will provide a Google Apps for Government solution. In addition, the agreements provide users with document storage, enterprise content management and unified capabili-ties. There is also an option for records management and digitally signed and encrypted email.

“Bringing modern commercial cloud capabili-ties such as Google Apps helps the Army to reduce IT costs, while giving troops access to Web tools for productivity, collaboration and communication that

Robert Deitz II


are always up to date,” said Shannon Sullivan, head of defense and intelligence, Google Enterprise.

accEssiBility sElEction

According to Sullivan, the accessibility of Google Apps from any device was a primary driver for the Army’s selection of Google.

“Mobile technology not only makes the Army more nimble, it is imperative for efficiency while personnel are in the field,” Sullivan explained. “Tablets are used by the Army for education and distance learning because they equip personnel with access to training materials anytime, any-where.”

For example, a soldier can review a lesson in Google Drive, com-plete an assignment with teammates in Google Docs, or attend a class via video Hangout, all from their tablet, smartphone or desktop. In addition, Army organizations can set up their own Google Play Private Channel for distributing mobile apps internally.

The 50,000 personnel who will potentially have access to Google Apps can use text and video chat, as well as real-time document, slide and spreadsheet co-authoring and editing.

“These capabilities are ideally suited for today’s modular teams and immediately scale to any number of Army units and users on demand,” Sullivan remarked. “The Army anticipates rapid adoption of Google Apps because many soldiers and Army personnel already use Google Apps in their personal lives.”

Gmail and Hangouts, for example, are popular ways to keep in touch with friends and family while deployed. Google Apps also enables seamless and high fidelity interoperability in their existing work envi-ronment with Google Quickoffice.

“What’s more, Google Apps runs on multiple operating systems and browsers providing more device options, plus works with existing Army security policies and DoD directory and authentication services,” Sullivan continued.

Google’s completion of Federal Information Security Management Act certification and accreditation also gave the government a com-plete understanding of the security controls Google Apps has in place and how they meet the Army’s stringent criteria.

raPid rEsPonsE

Microsoft’s Office 365 for Government offers a multi-tenant service that stores U.S. government data in a segregated community cloud. The solution offers online versions of email and calendaring (Out-look), collaboration (SharePoint), and instant messaging and presence (Lync), as well as a browser-based Office suite that includes the familiar Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs.

“With DoD now evaluating the adoption of cloud services and DISA named as the enterprise cloud service broker, Microsoft’s Office 365-browser-accessible offering aligns well into the DoD cloud com-puting strategy and offers a cost-effective service environment that can rapidly respond to DoD’s mission needs,” commented Susie Adams, chief technology officer for Microsoft Federal.

Currently, Office 365’s user base is over a million U.S. users from across federal and state and local government, and it is growing. “Gov-ernment customers may use Office 365 in various scenarios that fit their unique missions including hybrid environments, a Microsoft-unique offering,” Adams said.

There are several advantages to using Office 365 over what was being used previously, she suggested. For one, adopting Office 365 is a significant step for-ward for the department in fulfilling the DoD cloud computing strategy of leveraging commercial cloud services and achieving Joint Information Environment goals.

“Securely combining commercial and government services demonstrates the Army’s commitment to build on the successful DEE initiative and provides a secure, innovative and cost-effective solution that will help enable DoD’s goal of anytime, anywhere access

for the warfighter,” Adams said. “Office 365, coupled with our pack-aged software versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Lync, allows DoD organizations to employ a hybrid approach to cloud computing where organizations have a choice of the environment that best fits their needs.”

While security is always an issue, Adams stressed that one thing that separates Office 365 from other competitors its commitment to security, privacy, and trust and compliance.

“Our defense-in-depth approach extends from the physical data center to the developers writing the cloud service code and includes innovative security and privacy best practices that insure the safety of organization data,” she said. “We are committed to compliance with industry and government standards and regulations.”

For example, Office 365 has been certified for security compliance under federal criminal justice standards, and is on track for certifica-tion by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). In addition, the Joint Interoperability Test Command has certified Lync 2013 for connection to the DoD information network.

unifiEd suitE

Google Apps is a suite of unified communications and collabora-tion tools, including secure applications for email, chat, documents, spreadsheets, forms and video sharing.

There are a number of reasons Army Contracting Command is interested in these services, according to Brian Strosser, executive vice president of sales, DLT Solutions.

“Driven by a number of initiatives, including cloud-first man-dates, data center consolidation, and the never-ending pressure to do more with less, DoD has increasingly begun to look at cloud comput-ing as a way to reduce costs while continuing to pave the way for innovation,” Strosser said. “Email-as-a-service is one of the simplest and most mature cloud-based productivity platforms covered under FedRAMP.”

Migrating to the Google Apps for Government email-as-a-service solution will help DoD meet government mandates, as well as improve mobility, productivity and collaboration for warfighter and civilian per-sonnel alike, Strosser argued. “This contract is of interest and available to the entire DoD community. DLT has received interest from depart-ments throughout the Army and several other military branches.”

One example is the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), which has more than 3,000 billeted and approximately 6,000 non-billeted faculty, staff and students. As USU continued to grow and technology evolved, officials began looking at alternative options to its existing on-premise Novell email system.

“USU wanted to enable more effective collaboration, but still maintain the tight security controls required by DoD,” Strosser

Brian Strosser


explained. “Technology changes daily, and USU knew with the right email solution and the right team in place, it could do so much more.”

Towards the end of 2011, the university formed a committee of experts from different departments to review alternative options to its existing email system and address organizationwide challenges designed to reduce operating costs, consolidate disparate systems, and ultimately create a better workflow.

USU evaluated both cloud, hosted and on-site options, but ultimately decided to conduct a pilot. It then contracted with DLT Solutions for the acquisi-tion of 3,700 licensed seats, and migrated to Google Apps for Govern-ment from its existing Novell GroupWise and Microsoft Exchange 2003 environments. DLT brought on a cloud services brokerage, Cloud Sherpas, to help execute a seamless migration.

In addition to the need for a more modern email solution, USU was looking at ways to collaborate more closely within study groups as well as among faculty and staff. “A better way to work together was needed,” Strosser said.

It was when the university added all of its other non-email requirements that the choice was made for Google. “With straight Exchange, USU would have had to add additional costs for storage of the networks,” he explained. “After reviewing its options, USU found that so many things it wanted came with Google Apps for Govern-ment.”

In addition to Google’s email application, USU implemented other applications, including Calendar, Chat, Drive and Sites. With Google Drive, the spreadsheet lives in the cloud, so USU’s team could update the document at the same time, eliminating version control. Google Apps allowed team members to access spreadsheets and other impor-tant documents from any location.

For USU, this was a game-changing way to approach a shared project. “The new environment increased government transparency by allowing faculty, staff and students complete access to email and information on demand, vastly improving efficiency and collabora-tion,” Strosser said.

To be sure, this wasn’t an easy “out of the box” implementation for USU. As the implementation progressed, DLT and the university discovered additional security challenges. For users to collaborate on tasks and other project documents and deliverables, the university needed to maintain DoD-mandated security controls.

“One critical component of the overall email solution was the unique requirement to have Google Apps for Government fully Com-mon Access Card (CAC)-enabled and digital signature and encryption capable,” Strosser explained. “This would include the ability to utilize CAC for authentication purposes for the Google Apps for Government suite.”

To move forward with the added layer of security, modification was needed, and with the support and expertise of DLT and its team of solution partners, the cross-talk capability—a SecureAuth security assertion markup language (SAML) bridge—was deployed. Even with the added challenge, DLT was able to draw on its numerous internal and external resources to deliver the hardware needed to set up the SecureAuth SAML bridge.

“Throughout the implementation, DLT worked closely with its network of cloud partners, allowing the team to keep the project on time and provide flexibility to meet the strict security demands man-dated by DoD,” he concluded.

Google Apps and DLT have enabled USU to success-fully streamline its internal communications process, which has resulted in enhanced collaboration. Users are now able to gain secure access to accurate and updated information, improving operations for faculty and staff and providing improved communications with its students. They are also able to quickly create, edit and share calendars to one or dozens of colleagues and classmates and even telecommute.

USU also found that faculty and staff could work just as efficiently even if they didn’t have their standard government-issued laptop with them. With Google

Apps, users can gain access through CAC login and can see their docu-ments and emails via the cloud.

“USU found that switching to Google Apps would save the uni-versity approximately $55,000 in capital expenses/maintenance fees year-over-year and $30,000 in personnel resources annually,” said Greg Mullin, director of public sector, Cloud Sherpas, a DLT Solution Partner and Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year.

lEvEraging softwarE

Dell has been one of Microsoft’s Premier Large Account Resellers since the inception of that program in 1993.

“Dell’s program, Dell Advantage, provides a system of services and process that help our federal customers fully leverage the software technology they are acquire,” reported Sean Berg, director and general manager, Dell Federal Defense sales.

According to Berg, this is of interest to Army Contracting Com-mand because of the strong need to balance mission and functional requirements with tight budget restrictions.

“The bottom line is Army Contracting Command is looking to save money,” he said. “Dell is helping them do this with enterprise software licensing through volume acquisitions and productivity increases.”

Although, the agreements are simple in concept, Berg pointed out that they can be cumbersome for most organizations to evaluate, execute and manage. “Dell’s dedicated resources and past experience in supporting large enterprise license agreements across DoD and civilian agencies can help impact the execution and management of the contracts within large federal organizations,” he said.

As part of the service contract for Microsoft Office 365, Dell will offer email, collaboration, information sharing and mobile access through the commercial cloud services.

Office of Management and Budget mandates and congressional pressure are pushing both defense and civilian customers to continue consolidating data centers, Berg noted.

“Dell has been at the forefront of this trend and is one of the few vendors that is in a position to address the full spectrum of customer needs as they relate to this trend,” Berg remarked. “In this particular case, our past performance and capability as a reseller to manage and execute on the licensing program puts us in a fantastic position to help our customers succeed. It is very important for the agency to award a volume licensing contract to a company that can help it support and fully leverage the program for cost savings and productive increases long term.” O

Sean Berg




installation organization sEEKs to EnsurE “a singlE army nEtworK from Each Post/camP/station to thE tactical EdgE.”By harrison donnElly, mit Editor

As the United States constructs a new city of more than 30,000 residents in South Korea, under the major relocation of forces going on in that country, the “Army’s cable company” will be hard at work laying the cables and installing the equipment

needed to create a communications infrastructure able to meet the demands of both military operations and modern living.

The “cable company,” as its commander likes to call it, is the Project Manager, Installation Information Infrastructure and


Communications Capabilities (PM I3C2), within the Army Pro-gram Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS).

The C4 work being carried out for the massive effort to restruc-ture the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, known as the Yongsan Relocation Plan/Land Partnership Plan (YRP/LLP) is just one of the more than 100 projects, worth about $1 billion in value, currently being managed by PM I3C2. Under the leadership of Colonel Debora Theall, the 420-person organization is a key player in Army efforts to maintain and upgrade the information infrastructures at its many installations around the world, with the goal of ensuring “a single Army network from each post/camp/station to the tactical edge.”

In the case of the YRP/LPP, Theall explained, “We’re respon-sible for the entire C4 portion of this effort, which involves shut-ting down more than 100 posts, camps and stations throughout the Korean peninsula and moving about 30,000 people to Camp Humphries; it’s like building a new city, with 500 buildings. We’re responsible for not only digging in the fiber and installing routers and switches, to ensure data, voice and video, but we’re also con-solidating data into two central hubs, which requires the design, development and installation of a virtualized environment, and then the actual migration of servers and applications.

“We are digging in the fiber to the 500-plus buildings, install-ing area distribution nodes and putting end-user switches on all buildings, to ensure data, voice and video,” Theall said. “In addi-tion, we have about 16 buildings that are considered ‘intense C4I’ buildings, such as the U.S. Forces Korea headquar-ters and command center. These buildings require much more in terms of IT infrastructure, including huge knowledge walls and complex audiovisual control systems.”

In the first year of the YRP/LPP project, PM I3C2 focused on developing system requirement documents and engineering implementation plans, Theall noted, adding that the big push for the project comes in about a year, when more than 360 buildings will be coming online all at the same time.

Along with its work on the YRP/LPP project, PM I3C2 is active at Army facilities across the globe doing the basic work of connecting people, although its focus varies depending on whether it is working on domestic or overseas installations.

“I think of us as the Army’s cable company, bringing data, voice and video to every post, camp and station. We ensure the Army has appropriate bandwidth to conduct its operations worldwide,” Theall said, adding that the office is also responsible for Voice over Internet Protocol systems and is involved in areas such as future wireless solutions and the Army’s security architecture.

The mission gets more complicated in other countries, how-ever. “Here in CONUS, as we move towards the Joint Informa-tion Environment via our network modernization efforts, we’re divided along functional lines, meaning we focus our efforts on upgrading/modernizing the Army’s network infrastructure. But OCONUS, we’re more divided on geographic boundaries, meaning that PM I3C2 is the heavy lifter for a much wider range of IT infrastructure and services. Our OCONUS missions are much more complicated, because it’s not only the network

piece, but also the build-out and modernization of the Army’s computing infrastructure, creating virtualized environments and then migrating users, applications and circuits to the new environ-ment,” Theall said.

In Southwest Asia, for example, PM I3C2 at one point was doing almost $400 million in business in one year, in projects ranging from network infrastructure upgrades to build-out of tech control facilities and new data centers. One example is the Main Communications Facility located in Kuwait, which was completed at the end of 2013.

rEducing total costs

One of the challenges in the work of PM I3C2 is that its mis-sion is dispersed at more than 175 posts/camps/stations worldwide, with information infrastructures in widely varying conditions with multiple key stakeholders that range from the Department of the Army staff to combatant commanders worldwide. This external environment makes reducing total cost of ownership difficult but not impossible. Some of the actions being taken include bulk buys, bundling of contracts and standardization.

The PM is doing bulk buys of switches and routers and is tak-ing actions to bundle contracts, Theall noted. “When I first got here, we had seven or eight contracts for efforts at Fort Bragg, N.C., alone, for example. We started bundling contracts at instal-lations, and now we’re trying to bundle contracts at the regional

and functional level. For example, all of the outside plant work, which is the passive piece—the fiber that you dig in, for the entire Southwest region on one contract. Buying in bulk and reducing the number of contracts in turn reduces our total cost of ownership,” she said.

Most of PM I3C2’s contract work goes through the 10 prime contractors selected under the Army’s Infrastructure Modernization (IMOD) contract: AT&T Government Solutions, Avaya, Bechtel National, Engineering and Professional Services, General Dynamics Network Systems, LGS Innova-tions, NextiraOne Federal (now Black Box Network

Services), SAIC (now Leidos), Siemens Government Services, and Federal Network Systems (a Verizon company).

In addition to bulk buys and the bundling of contracts, stan-dardization is another means of reducing total cost of ownership, Theall noted. She recalled her work on the team renovating the Pentagon’s IT infrastructure. “We provided a standard level of IT service and capability based on the type of office. For example, a command and control facility like the National Military Command Center or Army Operations Center, for instance, received one standard level of service while more generic offices like the SATO travel office received a lesser, more basic set of standard IT services and capabilities.

“We’d like to do that worldwide, so that we would have maybe three to five different levels of standardized IT services and capabili-ties delivered, as opposed to having to engineer every post/camp/station or even building differently and uniquely,” she continued. “Think of this standardization the same as you do your ‘bundled’ cable options you get at home—there are a set of limited choices

Col. Debora Theall

24 | MIT 18.1 www.MIT-kmi.com

that range from average to premium services. Each is specifically defined and comes at a specific price point. This type of standard-ization, say at all the Army’s strategic command centers, would reduce the Army’s total cost of providing data, voice and video to its organizations worldwide.”

PartnEring with disa

“Reducing total cost of ownership has been a challenge and will likely continue to be a challenge given the PM’s external environment. Another challenge is balancing between the current and future environments. Everyone gets excited about moving to a global ticketing service or spending money on upgrading net-works. But we also have our current network and current tools that we have to maintain. So balancing our resources between current and future can be difficult,” Theall said.

The state of the information infrastructures at the 175-plus installations covered by the PM varies widely, from depots that may need a lot of work to the most up-to-date force projection sites such as Fort Bragg and Fort Stewart, Ga. Upgrading all the sites one by one was going to take too long, officials recognized. “It was taking us forever. We were never going to be able to get to a single Army network, or to collapse networks, and get all the Army partners to play, if we couldn’t do something more systemically and holistically,” she observed.

In response, the PM partnered with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) on the MPLS DISN Core Router/Joint Regional Security Stack/Area Distribution Node and End User Building initiative. I3C2 is working with DISA to systematically raise the bandwidth and collapse the network at the Army’s top 40 installations, which represent about 88 percent of the user population.

“We’ve already funded DISA to upgrade its core MPLS routers, which increases our bandwidth at the DISN level from 10 to 100 gigabits per second,” Theall explained. “Secondly, we’re working with DISA to establish several joint regional security stacks in CONUS, which will replace the 435 Top Level Army security stacks that we currently have in CONUS. The effort to date has been focused in CONUS, but we are now also beginning to push this same effort in SWA, Pacific and Europe.”

These efforts will not only reduce total cost of ownership, but will also increase network security and set the conditions as the Army moves to consolidate its enterprise services and applications at DISA DECs worldwide.

“You can’t suck from a big straw at the highest level and then have a small straw at the building. If you’re going to increase the bandwidth at the DISN level, you also have to upgrade network infrastructure at the post/camp/station level. Efforts at the instal-lation level is where I3C2 resides—DISA resides at the MPLS and JRSS levels—but all three have to come together if we are to truly increase our network capacity,” Theall explained.

lifE cyclE managEmEnt

As it joins in efforts to move the Army to a single infor-mation enterprise, the PM is also changing, taking on new responsibilities to include total life cycle management of the

Army’s network at the post/camp/station level and the develop-ment and implementation of enterprise suite of NetOp tools.

In assuming the life cycle management mission, the PM is looking at ways to sustain the aging installation level informa-tion infrastructure. In many cases, however, there is no contract mechanism to quickly repair or replace failing systems. To meet that need, the office is currently working on a new contract pro-gram for installation information infrastructure sustainment services, which will provide commercial manufacturer-type of support for the aging infrastructure, including the multiple older telephone switch systems installed worldwide.

A request for proposals for the program, which aims to keep the aging infrastructure up and going until full modernization can be achieved, is expected shortly.

Looking down the road, PM I3C2 will also be taking over the materiel development role for the Army’s enterprise level suite of NetOp tools. NetOps, as it is used here, is the set of tools and software employed to operate, manage and defend the Army Network. I3C2 is already working the Army’s global tick-eting solution, which is designed to support its current desktop environment and is one of the Army CIO/G6’s top initiatives to standardize the network. A request for proposals for that pro-gram is also expected shortly. O



Project Manager Installation, Information, Infrastructure, Communications, and Capabilities - Pacific system integrators installing communications cables to the newly completed Department of Defense Dependent Schools at Camp Humphrey, South Korea. The cables will provide connectivity and access to the Army Voice over Internet Protocol network as part of PEO EIS’ Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence support. (New High School in the background) [Photo courtesy of PEO EIS]


cotSacopia

Traffic Manager Software Available on the Cloud

Riverbed Technology has announced the availability of Riverbed Stingray 9.5 traffic manager software on Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud, a specific, isolated region of the AWS cloud that is designed to allow U.S. government agencies, contractors and customers to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. Riverbed provides hundreds of government organiza-tions around the world with solutions to meet their most demanding IT goals. Now, with the availability of Stingray on AWS GovCloud, agencies can optimize, scale, secure and improve the performance of their mission-critical applica-tions in the cloud. Stingray is a virtual and software-based Layer 7 application delivery controller with integrated web content optimization capability. Optimized to work in cloud environments, it is easily integrated into an applica-tion stack. By implementing Stingray on AWS GovCloud, agencies gain agility and cost savings and at the same time significantly improve the performance and scale of their critical application workloads and services.

Tablet Computers Designed for Tactical Operations

American Industrial Systems has announced the availability of the C4/I2 plat-form-based design COTS military embedded systems. AIS COTS rugged and advanced embedded computing systems, monitors and displays provide highly reliable C4 capabilities for situational awareness and data processing in ground vehicle and shipboard deployments. Designed for the COTS military marketplace, AIS ultra rugged displays and embedded computing systems are engineered to withstand the extreme environment and stringent demands of MILSTD- 810 and MIL-STD-461 standards and certifications. Available with 8.4-, 10.4- and 12-inch screen sizes, the compact and durable tablet computers are ideal for battlefield logistics, tactical operations, vehicle/aircraft maintenance and trouble-shooting applications, and also find suitable use in public safety, energy and utilities, transportation and auto-mation industries and markets.

Software Router Expands Product Line

Information Assurance Specialists (IAS) has introduced the Cisco ESR 5921 software router into its family of IAS Routers. For the first time, users can leverage Cisco propriety proto-cols on non-Cisco hardware. Cisco’s EIGRP, IP Multiplexing, CallManager Express, Radio-Aware Routing, Mobile IP, DMVPN and other protocols and capabilities can now be leveraged in applications where off-the-shelf Cisco hardware does not satisfy the size, weight and power requirements of the applica-tion. The integration of Cisco ESR5921 into the IAS Router product family further expands the capability of the family by adding Cisco propriety routing protocols and capabili-ties into the already robust IAS Router. By coupling the IAS Router capabilities with Cisco’s ESR 5921, the family of IAS Routers is unlike any other IP networking based routers in the market today. IAS Routers are small form factor enterprise grade routers that implement NSA Suite B cryptography, are compliant to the NSA’s High Assurance Internet Protocol Encryptions IPMEIR IPSEC specification, and are interoperable with most commercial IPSEC and SSL VPN technologies.

Rugged Phone Withstands Real

World RigorsBullitt Mobile, worldwide licensee of Cat

phones and accessories, has launched the Cat B100, a waterproof phone designed to with-stand the rigors of the real world. Perfect for noisy surroundings, the new rugged mobile phone boasts a noise canceling microphone and a high quality loudspeaker. The B100 also has large buttons, ideal for use while wearing gloves. It has been designed to survive a 1.8-meter drop, being submerged in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes and temperatures from -25 C to 55 C.


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Adelaida V. Severson’s diverse back-ground includes public relations, broad-cast journalism, marketing, events management, philanthropy and satellite communications. Additionally, she teaches courses on international communications at the university and corporate levels. She has over 20 years of experience in event coordination and broadcast satellite production. She and her husband, Barry, started Bushtex in 1994 and reorganized in 2003.

Severson, who was born and raised in Hawaii, worked domestically and interna-tionally in the broadcast television indus-try for eight years, and later in higher education administration for 12 years. She started her career as a journalist and reporter, and eventually fell into the satel-lite broadcast industry while working in Los Angeles as the operations manager for Transvision (formerly Vision Accom-plished). Her experience in the satellite industry includes coordinating televised NFL Super Bowls, the Summer and Winter Olympics since 1990, the first live legal depositions via satellite from Puerto Rico, and countless events around the United States and the world.

Q: Can you give us an overview of Bush-tex?

A: Bushtex technical operations and crews provide complete capabilities to build, pro-duce, originate and transmit information through satellite communication—video, audio, IP data and voice data. We specialize in remote areas of the world (even at sea), transmitting and receiving information in service to United States government stra-tegic concerns, for professional broadcast, private enterprise and Internet content delivery. With our special attention to detail, no job is too big or too small. Our mission is to provide quality satellite com-munications service to our domestic and international clients with responsiveness, honesty, professionalism and clarity.

Q: What types of products and services are you offering to military and other govern-ment customers?

A: We provide a myriad of services to the end-user, including custom-tailored satel-lite solutions. Not every client knows what they really want, but they know what they want in the end, so we guide them in the process of what is most efficient, cost-effective and timely for their application. Most times, they are mission critical, and our strength is that we are sensitive to this. Having said that, more specifically to the government and military customers currently, we provide operational and tech-nical support for satellite systems that we either inherit or build, integrated satellite transmit systems for backhaul purposes, and satellite space segment. In addition, we have built and upgraded satellite sys-tems for government end-users looking to upgrade or improve their current systems.

Q: What unique benefits does your com-pany provide its customers in comparison with other companies in your field?

A: We are a small and nimble company, able to provide service in a critical time and specialize in remote areas, especially high conflict areas. In addition, we provide custom level systems that are streamlined, coupled with space segment options and connectivity expertise.

Q: What are some of the most signifi-cant programs your company is currently working on with the military?

A: Currently, we are providing satellite space segment for training purposes to the Air Force and Army, as well as trans-mission and backhaul satellite services for unmanned aerial vehicle efforts.

Q: Can you give us some other examples of your work with government?

A: One example is the National Weather Service, which wanted to upgrade and add satellite transmissions to their existing operations in various parts of the country. Bushtex built and installed permanent systems both on the ground and on roof-tops to ensure the weather service was up and running, no matter the climate or terrain.

In addition, the U.S. National Guard wanted to view coverage in remote parts of Alaska using an unmanned aerial vehi-cle, but line-of-sight coverage was not an option due to the mountainous terrain in the region. Bushtex built, licensed and operated a temporary ground station to transmit and receive data from the airplane to the various federal agen-cies that needed the information. In fact, it was the first ever UAV flight that covered such terrain. From provid-ing communications in disaster areas to building temporary ground stations for the transmission and reception of data from unmanned vehicles, we help make things run smoothly. Currently, we provide custom satellite transmission systems for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in various areas nationwide and other agencies interna-tionally for UAV efforts.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

A: We are a woman- and minority-owned small business and also enjoy doing business with the commercial world for broadcast networks and corporate enti-ties. O

Adelaida V. Severson, Ph.D.President and Chief Executive Officer

Bushtex

inDUStry interVieW military information technology


NEXT ISSUE


Cover and In-Depth Interview with:

Lt. Gen. Edward C. CardonCommanderArmy Cyber Command

Insertion Order Deadline: March 14, 2014 • Ad Materials Deadline: March 21, 2014

FEAturEs

April 2014Volume 18, Issue 2

Cyber-Operations CentersIndustry is offering a variety of solutions and support services to enable organizations to protect their networks, systems, applications and information in real time.

tactical CommunicationsThe Army has begun issuing task orders under the $10 billion Global Tactical Advanced Communication Systems contract, which is expected to yield significant cost savings for the government while enabling industry to quickly fill needed mission requirements with innovative solutions.

Mobile DevicesAs the military explores the use of smartphones and other mobile devices in the field, a key issue is how the integration of ISR assets, such as imagery from unmanned aircraft sensors and command-and-control capabilities for communications and networking, can be tailored to speed decision making by expeditionary forces.

Insider threatsContinuous monitoring and other technologies are being enlisted in the fight against insider threats, which have moved into the spotlight recently as a great danger to information security.

UNLOCK OPPORTUNITY WITH A CYBERSECURITY DEGREE FROM UMUC

Prepare for a career in a fast-growing industry offering high-paying job opportunities. Get noticed with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in cybersecurity from University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Our innovative online educational programs; cutting-edge curriculum; and award-winning, globally ranked cyber competition team have helped make us a recognized leader in the field.

At UMUC, you can

• Take courses that address industry-standard certifications on the DoD 8570 list.

• Earn credit for military service, industry certifications, and DANTES and CLEP exams.

• Talk to advisors who understand military benefits.

• Continue your program wherever you go with online classes.

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On-site classes offered this spring at Fort Meade and everywhere onlineCall 877-275-UMUC or visit military.umuc.edu/cyberdegree

Designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education by the NSA and DHS

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