DISA Completes Pilots for DOD Cloud Infrastructure as Code Project

The Cloud Computing Program Office within the Defense Information Systems Agency has completed pilots for its DOD Cloud Infrastructure as Code project. 

The IaC initiative, which began in March, provides end users across the Department of Defense with secure, preconfigured and pre-authorized cloud environments for faster cloud deployments.

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services are under contract to develop the cloud templates for the project. The Microsoft template has been used in numerous pilots with military services, combatant commands and Fourth Estate agencies while the AWS template has just completed its first one, Breaking Defense reported.

IaC automates the complex series of tasks required in deploying a mission application or data into the cloud, including cloud design, provisioning, configuration, and assessment and authorization processes.

In an interview with Breaking Defense, CCPO product owner Dave Lago said the IaC templates reduce cloud deployment timelines from over a year to within months or even weeks. Lago believes the templates have the potential to cut down the timeline to as little as two hours.

The DOD Cloud IaC project also generates cost savings. According to Lago, IaC removes resourcing costs that come with developing and ensuring the security of cloud networking environments.

The resource savings promised by the project was demonstrated in a recent IaC pilot with the Army Enterprise Research and Development Center Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, Lago said. During the pilot, the research lab migrated workloads for its Enterprise Sustainment Management System to a DoD Cloud IaC environment within hours.

The cloud environments created through the project is expected to supplement the DOD cloud, which will be bearing the brunt of supporting the military’s applications for joint all domain operations.