Paul Puckett, the director of the Enterprise Cloud Management Office for the U.S. Army, said the Department of Defense must transform cloud acquisition strategy by developing a standard cost structure and building direct relationships with cloud service providers.
Puckett said the Army has begun to forge direct partnerships with CSPs through its cArmy program and Cloud Account Management Optimization effort in a push to eliminate excess cloud spending and have ownership of an enterprise cloud infrastructure, Federal News Network reported Thursday.
The Army lets companies compete for delivering mission capabilities based on their ability to design and deploy services using a government secure cloud infrastructure rather than their ability to resell cloud services.
Puckett said the adoption of the enterprisewide cloud platform has enabled the Army to save about $8 million in spending.
The military service’s cloud acquisition approach serves as a foundation to DOD’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program, the replacement for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure effort.
Pucket said his office is working closely with the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide lessons learned from the CAMO and cArmy programs and share how the Army lead cloud acquisitions.