The Defense Information Systems Agency recently took a step toward making its own data center act more like a cloud computing environment. The agency is launching new software development and testing tools that eventually will make it easier for military developers to test and deploy software themselves without the red tape usually required to provision new computing power.
"There are incredibly expanding capabilities on the internet that because of security and stability requirements, we can't use," Rob Vietmeyer, Forge.mil's project director, says. "We want to take the things that Amazon and Google are showing us are possible and take our assets to the next level, to allow rapid innovation of [Department of Defense] technology."
DISA, the central IT arm of the Department of Defense, has been working for more than a year to build the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), which will eventually become a private cloud for the military. RACE will be used to host all sorts of production software for the military, but one of the ways DISA hopes to increase its usability within DoD is through the launch of the first piece of Forge.mil, a new collaborative software development tool and repository called SoftwareForge.
Source: Information Week