Air Force deploys commercial IT capability

  • Published
  • By K. Houston Waters
  • 66 Air Base Group Public Affairs

The Enterprise-IT-as-Service team headquartered at Hanscom Air Force Base, reached a significant milestone in information technology by allowing Airmen direct access to the enterprise edge utilizing commercial cloud environments at six Air Force installations.  

 

Working with the EITaaS office through an Other Transaction Agreement, the Accenture Federal Services team passed commercial internet traffic from the Amazon Web Services and Azure Impact Level 5 cloud environments through the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Boundary Cloud Access Point, or BCAP, and onto the base networks.

 

The BCAP protects the Defense Information System Network from attacks that originate in the cloud environment, performs intrusion detection and prevention assessments, and filters out unauthorized traffic.

 

“We worked closely with our vendor partner to implement this cutting-edge technology by optimizing a hybrid cloud environment for users across our risk reduction effort bases,” said 2nd Lt. Blake Nunes, program manager, Compute and Store. “Our team has great passion for the future of the Air Force and we are inspired to work on such a unique acquisition.”   

 

Risk reduction bases include Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Hurlburt Field, Florida, Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, and Maxwell Air Force Base/Gunter Annex, Alabama.

 

This new EITaaS capability processes information at the source of the data, instead of in the cloud. This redirect optimizes cloud migration, reduces latency, and improves overall user experience.

 

"Our Compute and Store EITaaS effort focuses on the mission readiness of the entire Department of the Air Force,” said Arthur G. Hatcher, Jr., Office of the Secretary of the Air Force associate deputy chief information officer. “With base-level applications, data, and infrastructure all being connected and managed 'as a service,’ our Airmen are better able to complete their mission."

 

Additional risk-reduction efforts in the EITaaS program are currently in development. Aiming to make IT operations more scalable and affordable, the EITaaS team expects to deliver a new EITaaS Enterprise Security Operations Center, institute seamless workload movement, and enable centralized management of various hosting environments.

 

The goal of the EITaaS transformation program is to enable joint, all-domain operations through modern, stable, and secure digital infrastructure.