DISA moves to develop an ISR cloud with large object data storage contract
The Defense Systems information Agency’s Enterprise Services division has awarded Alliance Technology Group, Hanover, MD, a $45 million contract to provide the agency with large data object storage (LDOS) technology to develop an intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) cloud that requires the storage of huge amounts of data in a secure environment with access across networks.
The blanket purchase agreement has a one-year base period plus two one-year option.
Alliance is a small, disadvantage business, and was awarded the contract without a full and open competition because “Alliance Technology Group is the only contractor with the ability to provide the ISR cloud solution with available bandwidth at a secure and accessible location,” according to a statement from the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization-National Capital Region, which is required to offer justification for other than full and open competition.
“The large data object storage technology is required for an ISR cloud,” states the justification memo. “The large data object storage cloud must provide a single, global name-space that can store hundreds of billions of objects. DISA cannot provide the storage cloud in its Defense Enterprise Computing Centers (DECCs) due to the physical size of the necessary hardware.
“Furthermore, DISA does not have the funding to purchase the required hardware or storage facility required to develop and provide its own large data object storage technology. A commercial option can fulfill the government’s need for a storage cloud solution/offering. A commercial ISR cloud service will provide significant cost savings over existing POSIX storage technologies.”
The LDOS technology will be used to store a variety of ISR data, including wide-area motion imagery, standard and high-definition full-motion video, hyperspectral, laser imaging detection and ranging (LIDAR), electro-optical/infrared and synthetic aperture radar data formats.
Such storage capabilities would facilitate the Air Force’s Gorgon Stare wide-area surveillance data requirements, for example. It would also permit storage of geospatial content captured by smartphone and other mobile devices.
“The assistant secretary of defense has articulated a vision for transforming the information environment within DOD,” states the memo. “The envisioned changes represent a fundamental paradigm shift from providing platform-centric applications to platform-independent web-enabled net-centric services that meet the requirements of the end users, and which are highly available, secure and reliable.”
No comments:
Post a Comment