ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM) today announced that the U.S. Army has signed a five-year,
multi-million dollar contract with IBM to build, manage and operate
a cloud solution for greater IT flexibility, efficiency and
performance.
Designed for the Army's Redstone
Arsenal, near Huntsville,
Ala., the solution is part of the Army Private Cloud
Enterprise (APCE) program, a one-year task order with four
additional one-year options under the Army Private Cloud 2 (APC2)
contract.* If the Army exercises all options, the contract would be
worth approximately $62 million over
the five years.
In addition to building the infrastructure, IBM will provide the
Army with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) services, enabling it
to provision computing power on an as-needed basis for the most
efficient and cost-effective IT. The Army also will begin migrating
applications to the private cloud, moving up to 35 applications to
the private cloud in the first year.
"With this project, we're beginning to bring the IT
infrastructure of the U.S. Army into the 21st century,"
said Lt. Gen. Robert Ferrell, U.S.
Army CIO. "Cloud computing is a game-changing architecture that
provides improved performance with high efficiency, all in a secure
environment."
This project required Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)
Impact Level 5 (IL-5) Provisional Authorization. Information impact
levels consider the potential impact of information being
compromised. IL-5 gives the cloud provider the authority to manage
controlled, unclassified information.
IBM is the only company to be authorized by DISA at IL-5 to run
Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions on government premises. IBM
announced the accreditation in February which included a condition
limiting the initial number of tenants in the cloud; that condition
was removed in September.
The distinction renders IBM an ideal partner for the Army as it
undertakes this on-premise private cloud initiative. The Army
expects IBM to achieve DISA IL-6 – the agency's highest level –
within one year, which would certify IBM to work with classified
information up to "secret."
"Clients today are increasingly looking at the cloud as a
pathway to innovation," said Sam
Gordy, general manager, IBM U.S. Federal. "This IBM Cloud
solution will provide the Army with greater flexibility and will go
a long way toward mitigating, and, in some cases eliminating, the
security challenges inherent with multiple ingress and egress
points."
Today's news builds on IBM's strong relationship with the Army,
which last year adopted an IBM hybrid cloud solution for its
Logistics Support Activity. Through the solution, the Army
connected its on-premises environment to the IBM Cloud for greater
performance, scalability and security.
*APC2 is an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ)
contract that the Army awarded Dec, 28, 2011, to seven companies.
On Sept. 21, the Army extended the
IDIQ – which expired Dec. 31, 2016 –
to Dec. 31, 2021.
About IBM
For more about IBM Cloud, visit
www.ibm.com/cloud-computing.
About the U.S. Army
For more about the U.S. Army, visit
www.army.mil.
Contacts
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Lisa M.
Meyer
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Mike
Zimmerman
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IBM Media
Relations
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IBM Media
Relations
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(703)
309-7758
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(914)
766-4935
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Lisa.m.meyer@us.ibm.com
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mrzimmerman@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM