US Army Taps IBM's Government Cloud for Logistics Support

The U.S. Army is using a hybrid cloud from IBM to process more than 40 million transactions a day, more than the New York Stock Exchange.

IBM’s cloud connects into the Army’s on-premise environment to power broader analytics in the Army Logistics Support Activity (LOGSA). LOGSA is one of the Federal Government’s biggest logistics systems, providing integrated logistics support of Army operations worldwide. The hope is cloud will improve efficiency and effectiveness of logistical coordination.

The shift to hybrid has resulted in cost savings of 50 percent, according to IBM, with the Army now focused on incorporating new analytics capabilities that take advantage of flexible cloud infrastructure. Examples include condition-based maintenance and data mining.

LOGSA provides logistics intelligence, life cycle support, technical advice, assistance to the current and future forces, and integrates logistics information.

LOGSA is home of the Logistics Information Warehouse, the Army’s official storehouse for collecting, storing, organizing, and delivering logistics data. LIW provides services to more than 65,000 users and 150 partners around the world.

“The Army not only recognized a trend in IT that could transform how they deliver services to their logistics personnel around the world, they also implemented a cloud environment quickly and are already experiencing significant benefits,” said Anne Altman, general manager for IBM's U.S. Federal business unit, said in a press release. “They’re taking advantage of the inherent benefits of hybrid cloud: security and the ability to connect it with an existing IT system. It also gives the Army the flexibility to incorporate new analytics services and mobile capabilities.”

IDC recently named IBM a leader in U.S. Government cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Two SoftLayer data centers in Ashburn, Virginia, as well as one in Dallas were opened specifically for federal government workloads. IBM’s SmartCloud for Government is FedRAMP certified.

IBM also has a deal worth up to $1 billion with the Department of the Interior to help modernize to cloud and SaaS.