The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is gearing up for growth in its out-of-the-continental United States (OCONUS) cloud environment, forecasting an expansion of its private and commercial cloud programs.
During the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference in Honolulu on Oct. 22, agency officials from DISA’s J9 Hosting and Compute Center (HaCC), outlined the progress made and the next steps for expansion of their cloud services.
DISA continues to further expand its Joint Operational Edge (JOE) commercial cloud capability – which it launched last year – with sites located in Hawaii, Japan, and Germany. Each site has large U.S. military bases that house tens of thousands of personnel and are key overseas hubs for the Defense Department (DoD).
The agency has plans “to expand over the next 12 to 18 months to include [sites] around the world,” said Matt Quinn, JOE Product Owner.
He explained that for fiscal year (FY) 2025, the agency is not only interested in deploying JOE into additional Indo-Pacific locations, but also looking to deploy to the U.S. European Command and Central Command (CENTCOM).
DISA also plans to provide a platform for “Joint Enterprise Applications and Services” for JOE users. According to Quinn, as the agency seeks to expand its footprint, “diversifying vendors” is key. He touted the department’s latest IT North Star Strategy “Fulcrum” as a necessary tool kit to do so.
“The future needs to be this joint environment from which everyone can build,” Quinn said.
The Stratus private cloud capability also continues to evolve and grow since its initial launch at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii in August 2023, with the agency planning to run a joint exercise for Stratus in early April and then larger joint exercises in August.
DISA also plans to deploy Stratus nodes to CENTCOM for FY2025.
Progress in JOE and Stratus is part of DISA’s overarching plan – dubbed the DISA Next Strategy – “to bring cloud capabilities to the military services and combatant commands globally” with programs like JOE and Stratus, according to HaCC Cloud User Experience chief, Adam Ringel.
The DISA Next Strategy, unveiled earlier this year outlines the combat support agency’s priorities over the next five years, with cloud modernization identified as a key focus area. Specifically, the strategy details how the agency “must develop a fully functional DoD enterprise cloud environment.”
By 2030, DISA wants to operate a resilient, globally accessible hybrid cloud, with programs like JOE and Straus. According to Ringle, DoD customers get that environment, but it all depends on how they get there.
“With a private cloud offering like Stratus, users get a safer entry point if they’re just getting started with cloud and they can use it as a stepping stone to scalability, which is what you’d find with JOE’s commercial providers,” Ringle said.
Both are also complementary in a hybrid-cloud environment, he added.
