Enterprise Moving to the Cloud? Part 3 – U.S. Department of Defense

Storing data in the cloud has long been touted as cost-saving and secure, if you believe the words of cloud providers and avid supporters. The question of whether or not cloud infrastructure will work for your organization has likely been passed around, if you haven’t already outsourced data and/or computing resources. Recently, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) moved its data storage to the cloud. One of the largest and most important organizations in the country, therefore, now stands to benefit. Shouldn’t your enterprise as well if this is the case?

The agency has been moving documents to the cloud and sharing them to cut down on paperwork. As part of a file sharing initiative called the Joint Information Environment, the DoD made the move because multiple parties could access the same draft of files and documents, regardless of the platform used. Agents using computers and laptops, as well as those using smartphones can now see important files as soon as they are uploaded.

How the DoD Benefits

Keeping and organizing paperwork is costly. Not only do you continuously use up finite resources. The space needed to file it, print things out, and maintain the equipment supporting it mount expenses which now can be easily eliminated. At the DoD, information changes quickly and persistently. Plus, there is certainly more to get done than update paperwork all day long. With cloud storage, documents no longer needed can be deleted or moved, while edits and uploads can be performed effortlessly.

Anyone in the organization can quickly take care of these as part of their routines. Most of the physical labor that goes into updating paperwork is eliminating, increasing the overall efficiency of the DoD. This factor plays in with any large enterprise; cutting back on physical labor and inefficiencies helps everything run smoother. While the DoD’s purpose in switching to the cloud has been labeled as “increased mission effectiveness”, this is essentially how cloud storage benefits any organization.

A Secure Cloud Service

Competing cloud service companies almost always say their offerings are reliable, secure, and cost-saving. Now at the top of the chain is the Defense Information Systems Agency, the enterprise cloud service broker tasked with maintaining the DoD’s initiative and ensuring the success of its strategy. System-wide IT efficiency, data center consolidation, and cloud computing are some of the aspects being handled by the new agency, in the efforts to handle the most sensitive information in the nation.

As these must be absolutely top-of-the-line when it comes to reliability and security, proof that the DoD can rely on a cloud infrastructure is being realized. The shear size of the department means there is still a lot of work to do. It does show, however, that large enterprises such as yours can survive the transition and benefit from security levels suitable for your needs, especially if an organization requiring the highest level of security possible has found its way.

Read more:

• Department of Defense Moves to Cloud Storage, Saves Money