Army selects software to upgrade its portal

The Army has upgraded its Army Knowledge Online portal to Appian Enterprise v.3, the latest version of the portal product by Appian Corp. of Vienna, Va.The Army has also purchased additional software licenses from Appian. Last month, 770,000 people used AKO 12.5 million times. The 770,000 number represents a different group of people from the registered 1.6 million users, to test out the site, officials said.AKO provides single sign-on access to roughly 300 Army applications and services.“The global war on terror has created new demands for collaboration and information sharing,” said Gary Winkler, director of enterprise integration for the chief information officer. “The rapid and widespread acceptance of AKO as the Army operations portal and virtual workspace makes it the obvious and most appropriate vehicle for bringing groups of people with shared interests together,” Winkler said.Appian Enterprise v.3 is an open-standards-based business process management suite. The tool will let users send content to an unlimited number of targeted areas, based on the profiles and preferences they set up.“By upgrading AKO to Appian Enterprise v.3, the Army will be able to establish nested networks of structured communities of practice across all operations, training, leader and doctrine domains within the Army,” according to an Appian release. To date, users have uploaded over 1 million documents into AKO, and over 12 million documents have been downloaded and discussed online in AKO’s Knowledge Collaboration Centers, said Col. Timothy Fong, director of the Army’s chief technology office. “With Appian Enterprise v.3, users at all levels will be able to use AKO to collaborate on knowledge in private and secure virtual communities, that they can create themselves, on demand,” Fong added.