IBM Deepens its Cloud Services Entrenchment with the U.S. Government

IBM is making further inroads into getting its cloud computing tools and infrastructure solidified with the U.S. government. Big Blue recently announced that the U.S. Army is using IBM Hybrid Cloud to power one of the biggest logistics systems in the federal government. The new hybrid cloud system will be part of an ambitious Army data center designed to connect the IBM Cloud to the Army's on-premise environment to enable use of data analytics. The Army foresees cost savings of 50 percent over its current cost structure, based on migrations to IBM's cloud tools.

The new Logistics Support Activity initiative-- known as LOGSA -- provides on-time integrated logistics support of Army operations worldwide. Since migrating to an on premise hybrid cloud model with IBM in 2014, LOGSA already processes 40 million unique data transactions every day -- more than the New York Stock Exchange. 

"The Army not only recognized a trend in IT that could transform how they deliver services to their logistics personnel around the world, they also implemented a cloud environment quickly and are already experiencing significant benefits," said Anne Altman, General Manager for U.S. Federal at IBM. "They're taking advantage of the inherent benefits of hybrid cloud: security and the ability to connect it with an existing IT system. It also gives the Army the flexibility to incorporate new analytics services and mobile capabilities." 

IBM recently opened SoftLayer Federal cloud centers in Ashburn, Va., and Dallas. These centers were purportedly built to meet Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requirements for government workloads.  

IBM also built one of the industry's first cloud centers dedicated to workloads from the Department of Defense at impact levels 3-5 that can handle higher-risk unclassified data.  And, Big Blue has also been collaboration with NASA on crowdsourced, cloud-based contributions to NASA's space efforts, as we covered here.