US Army Enterprise Cloud Management Office Now an Agency

The Army announced on Tuesday that its Enterprise Cloud Management Office has become a full-fledged agency.

The new Enterprise Cloud Management Agency now serves as a field operating agency under the Army’s Office of the Chief Operating Officer, Fedscoop reported Tuesday.

“The formation of the ECMA as a new field operating agency represents the Army’s commitment to centralized acceleration to the cloud and adopting new digital technologies to implement the Army’s Digital Modernization Strategy,” Army CIO Raj Iyer told Fedscoop in a statement.

ECMO was initially created to provide the Army with foundations for data management and cloud migration. The office has since shifted focus towards the Army’s adoption and optimization of cloud computing in response to the increase in demand for telework and digital labor.

The legacy office was established in November 2019 and soon after suffered delays due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Despite having gaps in its workforce, ECMO moved ahead with its information technology modernization plan and announced full functionality in April 2020.

Paul Puckett will continue serving as ECMA’s director and will oversee ongoing efforts to establish a resilient cloud solution, the Army said.

Since he took on the ECMO role in November 2019, Puckett has been helping the Army achieve full systems convergence in line with the service’s multi-domain operations concept, which is aimed at linking sensors and any command and control nodes across all domains, the service said.

ECMO had also been working to modernize its IT through the cARMY program, a system designed to serve as a one-stop-shop for the Army’s cloud-related requirements.