The U.S Air Force has contracted out IBM to create a cloud-computing platform. The cloud platform will be useful in helping to secure military and national security information and data.The contract is 10 months long and will include the Air Force’s nine command centers, 100 military bases, and a total of 700,000 workers around the world.
The major challenge for IBM will be developing a platform that can support a network as massive as the Air Force, as well as uphold the security standards necessary for the government.
According to CNET, Lieutenant General William Ford, CIO and Chief of Warfighting Integration 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.â€
This partnership is in accordance with the Obama administration’s call for more widespread use of cloud computing in order to reduce costs, improve IT efficiency, and a more standard platform for government services and information.
