The Marine Corps is finalizing a new cloud strategy and looking for ways to modernize its hardware and software quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
William Williford, executive director of Marine Corps Systems Command, told C4ISRNET during the Charleston Defense Contractors Association Defense Summit Dec. 5 that he expects the strategy to be signed by Deputy Commandant for Information Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds before the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that the document resembles cloud strategies from the Navy\u2019s and the Navy\u2019s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During a keynote presentation at the conference, Williford said the Corps is looking at how to go from a government owned-government operated cloud model to a government owned-contractor operated model or even a hybrid model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRight now we\u2019re looking at how we put funding in the budget in order to support that move of our applications to the cloud,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of our biggest challenges today on the IT side of the business is one, moving that technology that we know is a great capability to the force quickly because you have to have funding in order to do that [and] two, using procurement, investment dollars to buy IT when some of that probably should be bought by another appropriation or color of money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the Marine Corps is studying what kind of appropriations such technology would require.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday we\u2019re struggling with [research and development], with procurement and with [operations and maintenance] on what we can buy through the IT capabilities and that\u2019s slowing us down form having the ability to buy IT quickly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Williford added that cloud at the tactical edge is a critical need for Systems Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marine Corps leaders are looking at how to do use the cloud across the range of military operations downrange and for enterprise purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the biggest challenges that we have in the Pacific is just the distance for logistics \u2026 so we feel that a cloud-based environment will help us in that are, both on the logistics side and on the tactical edge side,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The strategy should be finalized and signed by late December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":32235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,29,16,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3268],"class_list":["post-20551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-it-networks","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"DHJXAQCAJVALXHYH5DXPU3L23U","arc_canonical_url":"\/it-networks\/2018\/12\/06\/the-marines-will-soon-have-a-cloud-strategy\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n