Army improves delivery of training materials

Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) has begun deploying a system to securely distribute training and video materials to its 11 major installations and more than 750,000 soldiers.

FORSCOM will use Certeon Inc.'s Distribution Platform to position information closer to the end user, where it can be accessed with higher quality.

Dan Power, Army project manager at Fort McPherson, Ga., said a pilot test successfully demonstrated that secure content delivery networking "has the potential to significantly improve the warfighter's ability to securely access the training and video materials they need."

Until now, FORSCOM personnel had been unable to do that because of insufficient wide-area network bandwidth and network security barriers that block traffic, according to Certeon president David Lerner. The initial award was made in February through a broad prime contract held by GTSI Corp., and information was publicly released last week.

Certeon products help government users overcome network bottlenecks and barriers to information flow by securely sharing selected information and applications across network boundaries. The Certeon Distribution Platform connects information publishers with subscribers, ensuring that the desired people get the right information at the right time.

The Certeon solution also enables users to know when changes in published information are made, and content owners get reports showing when their information is being used and by whom. The Army deployment should be complete by the end of 2004, according to the company.