AKO backup site up and running

The Army recently completed an emergency data recovery site supporting the most critical applications on the Army Knowledge Online portal, and now the service is working to replicate the rest of the massive data center.

Col. Timothy Fong, director of the Army's chief technology office, said the emergency data recovery site was launched June 30 and is "capable of supporting our five most critical applications," although he declined to provide details.

AKO provides Army news, distance-learning opportunities, e-mail accounts, an advanced search engine, and instant messaging and chat capabilities. It also has a knowledge collaboration center for service staff worldwide. The portal has more than 1.4 million accounts, and Fong said more than half of all active-duty soldiers log in to AKO at least once a week.

Phase I of the AKO backup, which is data replication of the e-mail and knowledge collaboration data stores, has been up and running since June 27, he said. "We are executing the [data recovery] in a phased approach, and we are still working on Phases II and III."

Fong would not discuss specific details about the remaining data recovery phases or say how much the backup effort is costing the Army. He did say that the prime contractor for the project is CherryRoad Technologies Inc., which has subcontracted work to Northrop Grumman Information Technology.