Five ways defense agencies and warfighters can benefit from cloud technology

In the March issue of National Defense, Jennifer Chronis, general manager for the Defense Department (DoD) at Amazon Web Services, shared how defense and intelligence agencies can deploy cloud services to reduce costs, drive efficiencies, and successfully achieve their missions.

Within the article, Jennifer addresses security concerns, the benefits of the cloud, and the contract vehicles needed to tap into the potential of the hyperscale cloud. Below are five ways defense agencies and warfighters can benefit from cloud technology. Read the full article here.

1. Security: While security concerns were a traditional obstacle to increased adoption, there have been substantial advancements over the past two years. There is now widespread recognition in both the public and private sectors that commercial cloud options can be more secure than on-premises solutions.
2. Scalability: One of the most important advantages of the commercial cloud is its virtually limitless scalability when compared to other options.
3. Speed: Another advantage of commercial cloud is the superior speed, power and breadth of functionality available to users.
4. Ease of Development: Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of commercial cloud is the ease and speed of both development and deployment of new applications and platforms.
5. Contract Vehicles: The Defense Department has laid the groundwork to support the increased use of hyperscale commercial cloud. A good next step to consider is the creation of clear and easy contract vehicles, and the necessary funding flexibility, by which its many sub-agencies can quickly and efficiently provision cloud computing services.

The bottom line: cloud can empower the Defense Department to create truly groundbreaking new tools to enable its mission.

Learn how the Defense Information Systems Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Air Force use the cloud. And learn more about how AWS brings storage and compute to tactical situations.