Our Nation’s Defense Is Too Important To Hire But One Cloud Storage Company

How About We
Spread That Around?

by Seton Motley, Contributing Author: I am typing this on a laptop computer. (I remain thus far un-sponsored – so no brand name mentions.)

As I write, I repeatedly save my work to the computer’s desktop – and to my cloud service backup. (I remain thus far un-sponsored – so no brand name mentions.)

Why do I have two simultaneous backups constantly going? Because I do not like re-doing things.

Should something go amiss with one copy – I have another copy at the ready. The backup – has a backup.

Because I am not an idiot.

And this is just me putting quill to parchment regarding the news of the day. Nothing I scrawl is of national security import – or carries a government classification.

So one would think when a government agency like the Department of Defense (DoD) looks to get into the cloud storage business – they would absolutely look to have multiple redundancies for the things they are looking to store.

This is our nation’s defense, after all.

I’m sure some officials somewhere in the bureaucracy are penning editorials and looking to save them – but that is not even close to all of the documents to be stored in the cloud.

This is our nation’s defense, after all.

We have hundreds of thousands of men and women deployed all over the planet – oh-so-many of them in harm’s way. And they are counting on getting access to the data the DoD is storing – in many instances to survive.

So it would be a very good idea for the DoD to hire multiple companies – each with overlapping responsibilities for different portions of the DoDs backup needs.

As but a simplistic example:

“Defense should have at least two providers providing each portion of the cloud service – so that if one crashes, you have at least one at-the-ready backup.

“So, say, at a bare minimum: Five providers – each providing 40% of the necessary services.

“For government school victims – that makes 200%. Which means two providers each are providing every part of the total cloud service.

“Backup. Fail-safe. Redundancy.

“Not one provider – all by its onesies, providing all of the service.”

My example – only provides two copies. Or the number of copies I currently have of this unclassified missive.

I would be perfectly fine with – and actually feel a whole lot better – if the DoD created three backups of everything. Maybe even four would be good.

Unfortunately, that is not at all what the DoD is currently considering doing.

The Pentagon Is Close to Awarding a $10 Billion Deal to Amazon: “The Pentagon has not yet publicly announced a winner of the highly-sought-after, 10-year contract to provide cloud services to the Department of Defense as it overhauls its IT systems — a process it’s calling the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, program ....

“But behind the scenes, some Department of Defense agencies are so sure that Amazon will be awarded the contract that they are preparing for a transition to GovCloud, which is Amazon’s cloud infrastructure designed specifically for government use, according to this source.

“‘I can’t imagine any possible way that the deal could be stopped,’ (a source with knowledge of the deal) said, adding that it was only a matter of ‘waiting for the contract start date to be officially announced.’”

Go back and read that brief excerpt – and count the number of companies receiving the DoD deal.

The correct answer is: one. The DoD is giving a ten-year-$10 billion contract to Amazon – and only Amazon.

Which means the entirety of the Defense Department – will have one less backup of everything they produce…than I do of this document I am writing about the Defense Department and its backup plans.

This seems to me to be…highly insufficient. And not very intelligent at all.

Before the DoD closes this deal – they should kill it.

And start the decision process anew.

Looking to secure multiple companies – providing multiple backups of everything.

Because…duh.

This is our nation’s defense, after all.
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Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he contributes to ARRA News Service. Please feel free to follow him him on Twitter   /   Facebook.

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