The Department of Defense (DoD) is providing some insight into the first task orders awarded under the DoD’s $9 billion multi-vendor cloud contract, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC). […]

In a new interview with MeriTalk, Brandon Iske, a principal solutions architect at identity platform provider Okta, and Bill Wells, a senior solutions architect at cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS), evaluate the successes and challenges that agencies are experiencing as they implement required identity protections and offer advice and best practices for agencies as they continue to plan and implement components of their zero trust architectures. […]

The White House released its National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) in March, and the Office of National Cyber Director (ONCD) is working fast to develop an implementation plan and a workforce strategy to build a more resilient future. […]

The chief technology officer (CTO) for a top U.S. intelligence agency said today that working closely with industry is the key to safeguarding the country’s national security and resiliency – especially when it comes to new, emerging threats like artificial intelligence technology. […]

The U.S. Air Force Space Command has released the final solicitation for a new multiple-award contract to acquire cloud-based data software services. […]

Teresa Carlson, a former top executive at both Amazon and Microsoft, announced today that she is taking over as president and chief commercial officer at supply chain technology provider Flexport. […]

The Department of the Navy has awarded a five-year contract worth nearly $724 million to Amazon Web Services (AWS) that will provide the Navy with access to AWS’s commercial cloud environment, AWS Professional Services, and AWS training and certification courses. […]

Healthcare is changing rapidly, driven by IT innovation and mission needs. To keep pace and improve care delivery, government healthcare organizations should leverage industry expertise, says Omar Altalib, director of strategy partnerships and growth for Amazon Web Services (AWS). MeriTalk recently sat down with Altalib to discuss some of the thorniest challenges for healthcare organizations today: cybersecurity, IT modernization, and innovation. […]

Leading technology and security companies are banding together to share tools and products to better guard against cyberattacks, saying their security teams are spending more time correlating a blitz of unintegrated data than detecting and responding to threats. […]

In today’s edition of Countdown to MerITocracy, Amazon Web Services (AWS) explains the driving forces behind the company’s innovative programs to bring more U.S. military veterans into cybersecurity and IT careers – and swell the ranks of the tech-ready as the Federal government competes for their talents. […]

Teresa Carlson, who left Microsoft in 2010 to found Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector operation and later serve as president and chief growth officer at Splunk, confirmed today that she rejoined Microsoft late last month as corporate vice president and Executive-in-Residence. […]

The National Security Agency (NSA) confirmed that it re-awarded a cloud computing contract believed to be worth up to $10 billion to Amazon Web Services (AWS) after the agency’s initial award of the deal to AWS last summer was derailed by a protest by Microsoft. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is sustaining a protest by Microsoft after the company complained that the National Security Agency (NSA) improperly evaluated proposals for cloud services in support of NSA’s classified and unclassified computing requirements when it awarded a contract to Amazon Web Services (AWS). […]

Since the release of the Cloud First mandate in 2011, the Federal government has been pushing agencies to modernize legacy technology and migrate to the cloud. While Cloud First evolved into Cloud Smart, agencies have historically taken a measured approach to cloud migration. On the most recent FITARA scorecard, only three agencies scored an A in the Modernizing Government Technology category. Eleven agencies scored a C or below. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is lending some backing to protest by Microsoft of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) $10 billion cloud award to Amazon Web Services (AWS) earlier this year. […]

The coronavirus pandemic – for all the tragedy and disruption it continues to cause – has advanced the cause of digital modernization by three to five years, leaving government and private sector organizations better prepared to provide improved digital services going forward. […]

The United States Air Force (USAF) – like the rest of the Federal government – has focused a great deal of energy on IT modernization. Those efforts resulted in the sunsetting of 221 legacy IT systems over the past four years, a USAF official shared along with other insights during the inaugural Coffee Chat event organized by MeriTalk and Amazon Web Services. […]

Cloud service behemoths Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft appear to be squaring off once again over a big Federal government cloud contract – this time a deal awarded by the National Security Agency (NSA) to AWS. […]

Between the requirements of the Biden administration’s cybersecurity executive order and the ransomware-ravaged ranks of government and industry, there are two roads to a more productive and secure future – cloud and cyber. Amid the continual changes, education is the key to navigating the future now more than ever. That’s where MeriTalk UniversIT comes in. […]

When U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began moving to the cloud in 2014, much of the agency’s cloud movement was “lift and shift” – simply moving workloads as-is to the cloud. Over time, IT staff trained themselves on cloud operations and began to take greater advantage of the flexibility and scalability that cloud computing offers. […]

If you’re ready to invest a couple hours of time and focus, then UniversIT is ready to deliver to you the latest information on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and military internet of things (IoMT) for government technology applications. Plus a few fringe benefits: you’ll never see a bill for our classes, and there’s no need to hike across campus in the summer heat. […]

The Defense Department (DoD) said today it was taking steps to cancel its existing Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract after three years of work that left the contract tied up in court, and the Pentagon without benefit from the $10 billion deal awarded to Microsoft. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) and Microsoft are arguing for a shorter duration of any further legal proceedings before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over the Defense Department’s (DoD) Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract it re-awarded to Microsoft last year. […]

The vast majority of Federal civilian IT managers say their agency has accelerated digital transformation efforts in response to increased telework and the urgency to adapt citizen services, but even more say their digital transformation strategies are “not adapting fast enough.” […]

Teresa Carlson, currently vice president of Worldwide Public Sector and Industries at Amazon Web Services (AWS), will be leaving the company after more than a decade for the newly created position of president and chief growth officer at Splunk. […]

Calling all life-long learners, incurable inquisitives, and most of all, IT professionals who want to keep current on all things government IT: Class is back in session… […]

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services on March 16 announced a Collaborative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to assist the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Cloud Computing Program Office (CCPO) in developing a set of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates to build standard environments in Azure to accelerate Defense Department (DoD) cloud adoption. […]

The vast majority of Department of Defense (DoD) IT managers agree that cutting-edge defense technology is needed to meet their mission, but more than half of their mission-related technology needs to be updated or replaced. […]

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. […]

Fresh on the heels of last month’s news that AWS is coming to GDIT’s milCloud 2.0, experts from both companies are set for a deep dive on Feb. 24 – exploring how the new addition to the milCloud 2.0 lineup provides Department of Defense (DoD) mission owners with secure cloud services. […]