The Army's Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) provides infrastructure and information management systems, and develops, acquires and deploys tactical and management information technology systems and products. It also provides long-haul strategic communications for the Army, and is the DoD lead for biometrics.
Doug Wiltsie, a member of the Senior Executive Service, has been the program executive officer since late 2011, and he spoke to C4ISR & Networks Editor Barry Rosenberg about network modernization, and the expanding use of contracting vehicles like enterprise licensing agreements.
PEO EIS is integrally involved in modernizing Army networks. The first Joint Regional Security Stack (JRSS) is now online, with numerous other network modernization efforts underway. Please provide a status report.
DOUG WILTSIE: JRSS is the foundation that allows us to do some things. The first is to migrate all Army networks — there are about 30 of them — over to a single network that is managed within NETCOM [Network Enterprise Technology Command] and ARCYBER [Army Cyber Command]. That's one of the big foundational pieces. It allows us to be able to see the network and then provide the cyber level of protection that we're looking for in things like big data analytics to do the defense cyber operations, both in the situational awareness and the infrastructure pieces, and then to help improve our ability to eliminate the public-facing Web vulnerabilities. And so when you look at this, it is foundational to improve our security level, and apply cyber operations to it in a way that we've never done before.
We've [limited] the number of Internet access points to about half a dozen that allow us to see where traffic is coming in and out. You combine JRSS with MPLS [Multi-Protocol Label Switching], and now what you have is a more robust network that can run up to 100 GB. It connects all of the 40 major posts in the United States, which is about 95 percent of the Army population, and allows us to remove the old circuits, saving us a lot of money because right now we're maintaining the legacy circuits, as well as doing the installation of MPLS. Moving out the legacy systems allows us to now go to voice over IP where we can get rid of a lot of the ISDN lines and TDMA switches and other legacy systems.
There's a great transformation. We're close to a tipping point to be able to start implementing a lot of those things that the G-6 wants to do to improve our capability and security, and get rid of the legacy stuff that costs us a lot of money.
Army CIO LTG Robert Ferrell recently released the Army Network Campaign Plan. What new guidance does it contain for PEO EIS?
WILTSIE: We're trying to accelerate the implementation of the network with the single-security architecture that will allow us to bring enterprise services. His real focus has been in that area and also in the area of the development of the future of the Signal Regiment and how it combines with the cyber organizations.
Some of the specifics that are in the Army Network Campaign Plan [include] home-station mission-command centers where we will develop the capability for some of the divisions to not send as much [network capability] forward, but stay in sanctuary back at their post, camp and station and have that same capability back here. That's a real stress on the network. It's a real challenge, but we're working the strategy to be able to implement that. That'll allow the Army to be faster in standing up capability for early entry, [for example], which is important for force projection and the ability to move quickly. Using the network to help implement that is critical.
Your counterpart Navy PEO EIS is making extensive use of enterprise license agreements (ELA) to procure software from companies like Microsoft and Adobe. How is Army PEO EIS using these types of contract vehicles?
WILTSIE: We continue to use enterprise license agreements. In some cases we've partnered with DISA and the Air Force to bring bigger joint ELAs to the forefront and try and achieve savings. The big thing for us with ELAs is the cost savings that can be established by [purchasing for] a large pool.
We use approximately 12 ELAs today, primarily Armywide contracts implemented through the CHESS (Computer Hardware Enterprise Software and Solutions) program. These are done in conjunction with the G-6, which sets the requirements for what ELAs they want to establish based on being able to survey across the Army where licenses are being used and how we can pool those licenses together to be able to get some efficiency. We've been very successful at it, and continue to use that as a capability to drive price down and save money.
You're now talking with companies about what the next generation of ELAs will look like. How do you expect them to evolve regarding the way they're written and/or executed?
WILTSIE: They are achieving the savings that we expect. We've got a couple of hiccups in how we implement it, [in terms of] tracking how many people have downloaded [software], so that we can get a real understanding of what the costs will be from a true-up position.
A true-up position?
WILTSIE: At the end of some [predetermined] period, we get together with the person with whom we've signed the license agreement, and we look to see how many were used. It's called a true-up. We've been very successful in hitting our numbers. If we project that we're going to use 1,000 licenses, for example, we're pretty good at projecting what we're [actually] going to use.
The issue into which you run within ELA is that if you don't have that implementation process in place, it can cost you money if folks download stuff thinking it's free. Really in the end it's not.
In the area of data center consolidation and use of cloud computing, Acting DoD CIO Terry Halvorsen is prompting the services to use commercial cloud capability, or at least to consider it before going with DISA's MilCloud. What is the Army doing in this area?
WILTSIE: The G-6 has been the leader in the closing of data centers. Our focus right now is to try and build the cloud computing environment that would be standard either in a DISA DECC [Defense Enterprise Computing Center] or in a commercial data center that would allow us to move applications into the cloud. All they would bring is their application that would be modified to a software-development kit, and then bring their data. We would work the infrastructure and service layers to make sure that the systems would run.
What we're trying to do right now is to develop the cost model that will allow us to look at an application defined by complexity, whether it's going to be a low risk, a moderate risk or a high risk to move. And risk is defined by complexity, not by whether it will be successful. Doing that allows the application owners to then estimate what the cost will be to move, and then budget for that cost. That's a key step in being able to do the migration.
Migration to a cloud?
WILTSIE: Yes. We're building a computing environment that does have a legacy environment in it, but we want that to be very small. We really want the modernization, virtualization and rationalization to be a cloud computing environment where we don't have to maintain hardware on a program basis [and] can maintain across the enterprise.
In a private cloud?
WILTSIE: Yes. The big difference between last year and this year is working with the G-6 to define what can go into a private cloud in a commercial data center versus what has to go into a DISA DECC. In discussion with the G-6, the definition has been that business systems and command-and-control systems need to go into a DISA DECC. The rest may move into a commercial data center that meets the NSA guidelines for security levels one through five, and then also six, which would be separate.
The important piece of this is that it's not a commercial data center as I would use as a private citizen, but one that has the security requirements in place that allows us to place data in it up to the confidential level.
