WASHINGTON — A request for proposals for the U.S. Air Force’s Cloud One Next program could come as soon as this month, because the service eyes a spring 2024 contract award, an official said.
The Air Force teased its Cloud One successor in November, in search of industry feedback with a request for information. On the time, interested corporations were asked how they may approach managing and modernizing Cloud One while factoring in “recent government leadership direction,” including the National Defense Strategy and a fiscal 2023-2028 information technology road map.
While details in regards to the future arrangement are still being ironed out, C1N, because it’s known, will emphasize zero-trust cybersecurity, identity, credential and access management, or ICAM, and software development, Maj. Gen. Anthony Genatempo said July 31 on the Air Force’s Life Cycle Industry Days event in Dayton, Ohio. Genatempo serves as this system executive officer for command, control, communications, intelligence and networks.
Zero trust is a cybersecurity paradigm that assumes networks and databases have already been breached, thus requiring constant validation of users and devices. ICAM is a way of checking qualifications after which tailoring what information is out there to a user.
“We’re bringing in a number of the CIO’s strategy,” Genatempo said.
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The concentrate on cloud services comes because the Air Force seeks additional data durability and portability. Its forces are amongst probably the most scattered, with infrastructure dotting the globe. Cloud One launched years ago, providing access to apps, information and broader connectivity.
Jay Bonci, the Air Force’s chief technology officer, in December told C4ISRNET he considered Cloud One, with its concentrate on Platform as a Service, or PaaS, a springboard to greater digital modernization.
“Cloud One has been principally focused on a PaaS baseline, so platform as a service, with a heavy concentrate on refactoring apps to benefit from PaaS. And in so doing, it has cleaned up a number of technical debt,” he said on the time. “Undoubtedly, Cloud One has been an enormous success, nevertheless it’s going to should proceed to have a look at the way it gets increasingly and more customers.”
Defense News reporter Stephen Losey contributed to this text.
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a each day newspaper in South Carolina. Colin can be an award-winning photographer.