General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) recently welcomed the addition of Amazon Web Services GovCloud services to the milCloud 2.0 lineup under an agreement announced last month. The new partnership gives Department of Defense (DoD) mission partners an easy and effective way to adopt both fit-for-purpose and general purpose cloud capabilities for a wide variety of workloads.
Eric McGrane, GDIT’s senior director of DISA and DoD Enterprise Services, said during a Feb. 24 webinar hosted by AWS, GDIT, and MeriTalk, that the existing milCloud 2.0 service lineup remains intact, and that the deal with AWS adds the “capacity to broker to AWS commercial cloud services.”
“[milCloud 2.0 has] always been secure, easy to use, and affordable, and none of that changes with the addition of AWS,” said McGrane. “Ease of use is something we are very excited about with this contract,” he added.
“We are thrilled to be able to provide DoD customers with the services and solutions that they need,” McGrane said. “The ease of use and self-service in this contract will create a faster way for our customers to migrate to the cloud and be successful.”
Jim Matney, GDIT’s vice president and general manager of the DISA and Enterprise Services Sector, explained that with GDIT as the manager of milCloud 2.0, “we find abilities to expand services for our mission partners.” While milCloud 2.0 is a “fit-for-purpose” cloud with facilities located inside the Department of Defense information network (DoDIN), AWS GovCloud provides “general purpose” cloud services not previously available through milCloud 2.0.
Matney explained that the addition of AWS GovCloud creates a new “pillar” of service for milCloud 2.0. “That’s called choice … Do you want that on-premise ability to host a critical application, or a general purpose cloud, or both? Now you have the choice.”
Giving milCloud 2.0 customers the “speed of relevance” in adding AWS GovCloud services is a key advantage to the new arrangement, he said. “We can do it within 48 hours,” Matney said. “This contract is already awarded – you go to the portal, and you can access the service.”
Faisal Iqbal, AWS’ Head of Solutions Architects for Federal Systems Integrators and Solutions, said GDIT has been a “great partner with AWS for a number of years,” and that on a service level, AWS “has been working to expand our services to support virtually any cloud workload.”
Iqbal ran down a lengthy list of services and applications that milCloud 2.0 customers can access with AWS GovCloud, the service’s regional infrastructures, and the variety of security levels under FedRAMP and other standards.
He emphasized the ease of access that milCloud 2.0 customers will enjoy when they use AWS GovCloud services. “You are going to get access to all of the goodness of AWS, as if you had asked for it right away,” Iqbal said. He added that AWS is looking at introducing additional services in the future.
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