Army Futures Command wants help growing commercial cloud data environment
Army Futures Command is interested in bringing in an industry partner to further develop its cloud infrastructure for enabling better data-driven decision-making across the service.
The command — launched in 2018 with the focus of modernizing the Army in six priority areas — issued a request for information this week to conduct market research on potential vendors to support its Unified Data Environment (UDE).
Futures Command describes the UDE as “an existing cloud based information technology infrastructure to host mission systems, applications, services, and data.” The commercial cloud environment “exists as an enterprise enabling platform that enables Army leaders at every echelon to make fully informed, data driven decisions, based on authoritative and/or production data sources,” the RFI says.
In an eventual vendor partner, Army Futures Command is looking for it to do five things:
- Enable the migration of subordinate elements to a cloud environment by providing the necessary shared commons services.
- Support the migration of enterprise and mission applications currently hosted on Nonclassified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet), Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN), and Secure Defense Research and Engineering Network (SDREN).
- Establish a centralized data warehouse containing curated, rationalized data.
- Establish an enterprise DevSecOps capability to support development and deployment of future applications drawing data from, and population data to, the central warehouse.
- Establish an enterprise Data Science capability to support innovative analysis.
Interested vendors with a secret-level clearance can respond until Oct. 21.
Army Futures Command, based in Austin, Texas, will be a testbed of sorts for the service’s modernization. The Army will pilot part of its enterprise IT-as-a-service program at the command’s headquarters.
