Page 24 - FCW, April 2017

CAPITALIZING ON THE CLOUD
Executive Viewpoint
A CONVERSATION WITH GARY WANG AND ATTILA BOGNAR
Wang and Bognar discuss how the Army is leveraging the cloud to improve its IT services and support its data consolidation efforts.
GARY WANG
ARMY DEPUTY CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER/G-6
ATTILA BOGNAR
CHIEF, ARMY
DATA CENTER CONSOLIDATION PLAN (ADDCP) DIVISION/ OCIO/G-6
How does the cloud fit into the
Army’s larger IT strategy?
Wang: First, we’re making great strides to reduce the IT infrastructure. One of the ways we’re doing that is by moving to a cloud-based as-a-service enterprise computing environment. The cloud also is helping enhance the security of our IT environment.
And moving to an as-a-service model with
a commercial provider in some of these
areas gives us added flexibility and agility
to respond to the changing environment. In the past, when the government would own
the hardware and employ people to run the data center and provide services, we were constrained by what I like to call “colors of money.” You would use one color of money to buy the hardware, and then another color of money to actually pay for the labor. That is no longer the case when we take an as-a-service approach and contract it out.
Bognar: And there’s a nexus between closing legacy data centers and developing a cloud- enabled environment. As we shut down data centers, we want to use the cloud as a final resting place, if you will, for the applications.
What are the most important benefits/gains you’ve seen with
the cloud so far?
Wang: One of our early adopters was the Total
Ammunition Management Information System, or TAMIS. They have seen the benefits in terms of cost savings, ease of use, the transparency
of data—and being able to receive reports from their cloud service provider on performance metrics. These quick results have aided their decision-making as they look to the future.
Bognar: We’re still really in the initial stages of trying to establish the benefits. To help us do that, we are creating an on-premise, private cloud pilot at the Redstone Arsenal. This will be contractor-owned and contractor-operated, so we can really see the benefits that come with this model.
What are some of the longer-term gains that you expect cloud to bring? Wang: I always talk about economies of scale. As we have an increasing number of enterprise applications in the cloud environment, it
does give us some purchasing power, so we
can lower our costs that way. Also, as I said earlier, we can take advantage of emerging technologies more quickly, using the cloud
as a kind of on-ramp in the IT world. One example is the use of analytics. It’s much easier to apply analytics in the cloud environment, so we’ll probably see more
of that down the road.
Bognar: Also, here’s what it will let us do: If I’m a customer [of a cloud service], I have the ability to scale up and down on demand. I can set up a development server in the morning, and that evening I can tear it down. And guess what? Because it’s a metered service, I’m only paying for the time I had that server up. I think that as we begin to use the cloud more and take advantage of its capabilities, we’re going to see a greater demand for it. I’m real excited about that.
This interview continues at carahsoft.com/army-cloud.
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