Five years ago the Defense Information Systems Agency shifted its focus from asset provisioning to managed services, said DISA Chief Information Officer Henry Sienkiewicz. Now, its taking on a new challenge: improving scalability and usability, he said.

"We don't buy the actual assets anymore; we get them as a service," said Sienkiewicz Aug. 24, while speaking at a FedScoop event in Washington, D.C. "How do we take it to the next step? How do we move beyond email and collaboration and how do we look fully inside the desktop environment?"

As DISA increases its service offerings, it's challenged to rethink delivery, he said, especially with the proliferation of mobile devices and thin clients.  

"How do I go there and allow us to be able to use and deliver the full desktop experience, through a browser, through some other device and not necessarily be tethered?" said Sienkiewicz.

"As we start to move into this other service delivery, how do we make it as intuitive, as easy, but at the same time get all the benefits--get those benefits of 24/7/365 reliability that we want at the level you need inside your service level agreement to drive all that security."

DISA is moving the Army on its enterprise email with a target migration of 1.7 million users, said Sienkiewicz. The transition is currently at 90,000 users and, following a 30-day operational pause, DISA is "working through firewalls" to fix some early problems, he said.

DISA's enterprise SharePiont offering is also "rapidly coming out the door," at the agency and will soon be open to the rest of the Defense Department. Sienkiewicz also said, "a whole expansion of that platform as a service offering [will be] coming out on some releases. I would expect you'll see some of them next week."

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