Navy secretary embraces the commercial cloud

Another federal agency has officially embraced commercial cloud services.

The latest example is the secretary of the Navy’s web portal, now hosted by Amazon Web Services following a successful pilot program between the Department of the Navy Assistant for Administration (DON/AA) and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command Systems Center Atlantic.

According to a statement from the Navy Department’s Office of the CIO, the site is part of the secretary of the Navy’s Public Portal Initiative, which establishes a unified web presence that allows multiple organizations to share public content online and standardizes the technology used for public website development.

The key drivers for the Navy are efficiencies and cost savings.

As FCW reported in April, Navy Department CIO Terry Halvorsen said the decision to go with a commercial provider was made after analysis of the "type of data stored in the portal, the ease of access due to significantly faster response times, security and cost."

When compared to using a government site to host the public-facing data, commercial services faired particularly well in price, costing half as much.

The Navy’s use of commercial cloud services aligns with the department’s cloud computing strategy published in June, which enables Navy organizations that host publicly releasable information to use commercial cloud providers so long as all security, technical and mission requirements are met in a best-value deal.

According to the Navy CIO’s statement, several Secretary of the Navy websites have transitioned to the portal, including the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment, 21st Century Sailor and Marine, Navy Civilian Human Resources, the Navy CIO and DON/AA.