Air Force contracts with IBM to design cloud

The Air Force has tapped IBM for a big job--to create a cloud computing environment that will protect military and national security data. The 10-month contract will cover work involving the Air Force's network of nine command centers, 100 military bases and 700,000 personnel around the world using advanced security technologies.

IBM said in a press release that the project will push the technology boundaries of cloud computing with an infrastructure design that not only supports large-scale networks, but meets rigorous security standards.

"Our goal is to demonstrate how cloud computing can be a tool to enable our Air Force to manage, monitor and secure the information flowing through our network," Lieutenant General William Lord, Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Air Force, said. "We examined the expertise of IBM's commercial performance in cloud computing and asked them to develop an architecture that could lead to improved performance within the Air Force environment to improve all operational, analytical and security capabilities."

IBM said that its researchers, software architects, analytics specialists and cybersecurity experts will work with military personnel and other federal agencies. It said a key to the design will be advanced "stream computing" analytics coupled with sensors, monitors and other detection devices.

Big Blue said this approach will enable the Air Force to "perpetually analyze the massive amounts of data flowing through its network and get fast, accurate, and actionable insights about possible threats, such as cyber attacks and network, system or application failures, while automatically preventing disruptions."

The Obama administration has called for more extensive use of cloud computing to improve information technology efficiency, reduce costs and provide a standard platform for delivering government services.

For more on the Air Force and Big Blue:
- check out this cnet.com article
- read this InformationWeek article
- here's the IBM press release

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