from Drudge this morning: Another Defense Agency Migrates Data to Amazon Cloud

https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/03/another-defense-agency-migrates-data-amazon-cloud/155699/

>March 20, 2019

>The Defense Health Agency, which supports the delivery of health and medical services to millions of Army, Navy and Air Force personnel worldwide, is Amazon’s newest cloud customer.

>Amazon Web Services will now host DHA’s Armed Forces Billing and Collection Utilization Solution in GovCloud U.S. West region, a cluster of data centers built specifically to host some of the government’s most sensitive data.

>DHA joins the Army, U.S. Transportation Command and other defense agencies moving increasingly large—and sometimes highly sensitive—data sets to commercial clouds.

>The cloud migration, executed by Virginia-based defense and technology contractor General Dynamics Information Technology, marks the first time DHA has migrated an Impact Level 4 workload—which includes sensitive unclassified data—to AWS.

>“GDIT has reached a significant milestone by successfully navigating DHA’s workload to AWS GovCloud (US-West) Region,” said vice president Kamal Narang, head of GDIT’s Health Sector. “Our strong relationship with AWS and intimate knowledge of our customer’s needs made this challenge a reality and will usher in a new era of cloud agility for DHA.”

>GDIT will continue its relationship with DHA following a $56 million, five-year task order awarded by the agency to operate and sustain the cloud-based Armed Forces Billing and Collection Utilization Solution.

>The move to cloud reflects a growing trend within the Pentagon and across civilian agencies. Some analysts predict the Defense Department will spend as much as $2 billion in cloud-related services in the coming year. The Pentagon is also expected to award two cloud contracts—the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions and Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contracts—potentially worth a total of $18 billion.