Halvorsen: DOD not that slow on cloud
The Pentagon is like "four federated giant corporations" trying to procure their own cloud services, says the acting CIO.
Acting Defense Department CIO Terry Halvorsen is pushing back on what he said was a misconception that the Pentagon is far behind the private sector in adopting cloud computing.
"While we're behind by some measures, if you go to any of the Fortune 50 right now and ask them where they are with their cloud … you get some very surprising answers," Halvorsen told a Cloud Computing Caucus Advisory Group event in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12. "So we're behind some and I want to go faster, but I do think it's worthy to note that I don't think we're that far behind the commercial [sector], and I don’t think we're doing things that differently."
Halvorsen said that like DOD, a lot of big corporations have cloud requirements that go beyond baseline security. The Pentagon, he added, is akin to "four federated giant corporations" -- the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps -- trying to procure their own cloud services.
The Pentagon's top IT official said his office is planning another cloud industry day for late March or early April.