The Department of Defense (DoD) has started migrating its IT users to Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS), the multibillion commercial cloud-based environment that will deliver collaboration services to the Defense Department, Federal News Network reported on Friday.
DEOS began the rollout process to its first users on Jan. 14th, according to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), who is spearheading the migration. Following the initial stages, DISA will deliver the cloud-based office suite to customers at other DoD agencies.
“We’re replacing legacy capabilities… We chose this approach because industry provides these state-of-the-art SaaS offerings and keeps them more current than we’ve been able to,” said Dr. Brian Hermann, the director of DISA’s services development directorate.
While DISA will support the new cloud-based services for its customers in the “fourth estate,” the military services will have to procure their own services from the DEOS contract. Following the purchase, DoD will unify them in a “federated” environment.
“This aligns with our overall strategy of adopting and buying capabilities that exist before we create something that that industry already provides, and we’re pursuing the same approach in most of our portfolios that have commercial analogues,” Hermann added.
The DEOS offerings are being provided through a 10-year contract with General Dynamics Information Technology, with the core SaaS platform based on Microsoft’s Office 365. “It’s been pretty effective for us and it allows us to connect with some of our mission partners outside DoD, but I think it could be made more modern as we move forward in that space,” Hermann stated.
During the beginning stages, DISA will only deploy DEOS on unclassified networks. The offerings will be certified up to impact level 5. Following, the department will introduce similar capabilities across its classified networks.
