Capacity for Service
DISA COMPUTING SERVICES’ DYNAMIC IT PROVISIONING CONTRACTS LET CUSTOMERS PAY FOR WHAT THEY USE.
Traditional computer infrastructure setup is fairly straightforward: Buy the equipment, implement in the data center, plan for future capacity needs, and add or change systems as required. While the steps in this process may be straightforward, the time to complete them can often exceed what is acceptable to both customer and service provider alike.
The conventional method for acquiring capital assets has always been a lengthy and time-consuming process, with a multitude of reviews and oversight along the way. This is the environment that DISA Computing Services operated within before recently awarding several “capacity services” contracts.
DISA Computing Services has now migrated to a “utility computing” or “service- based computing” model for acquiring hardware capacity. DISA awarded six major “capacity services” contracts potentially worth $1.4 billion, five of which cover the processor environment, with the other pertaining to storage. Unlike other services relationships between government and industry, where management responsibility is shifted as well, DISA Computing Services continues to maintain complete control over all data center operations.
Under these contracts, the winning vendors provide processing or storage capacity as a service within the Defense Enterprise Computing Centers (DECCs) operated by DISA, which will retain control over data center operations. DISA, and therefore its customers, will pay only for the capacity consumed, or as one would pay utility bill at home. As technology evolves to offer new operating system releases and new hardware, the job of managing upgrades largely belongs to the vendors.
STRATEGIC CONTRACTS
These newly awarded contracts tie very closely to Lieutenant General Charles E. Croom’s strategy for DISA, which emphasizes speed, power to the edge, operational excellence, sharing and defending information, and best value.
Speed. With these contracts, DISA will be able to deliver capacity in a matter of days, or in some situations just hours, both processing and the associated data storage capabilities wherever the agency’s customers have a requirement. This flexibility is the underpinning of DISA’s ability to meet the net-centric goal of delivering information processing capability whenever and wherever the warfighter requires it.
“The capacity service model finally will be able to deliver on the just-in-time capability that customers have been demanding,” according to Kerry Miller, chief of the storage line of business for DISA.
The goal of closing the gap between the availability of technologies and fielding them for warfighting advantage is achieved with these contracts.
Power to the Edge. This approach will allow the government to retain operational control of the capacity and to maintain a strategy focused on future DoD computing needs while meeting tactical requirements in a fashion which remains consistent with strategic directions. The synergy of the supplier’s knowledge of their technology combined with DISA’s knowledge of the warfighter’s requirements provides DoD with the most effective possible solutions.
These contracts established the capability for applications to dynamically scale computing resources up and down on demand to meet traffic loads as well as provided an enterprise level storage capability.
Operational Excellence. One of the real benefits to this approach is the savings associated with total cost of ownership. No longer will DISA have to pre-position IT assets based on four- to five-year projections provided by customers. As customer requirements change, DISA will provide capacity and capability on an as-needed basis.
As new technologies arise in the marketplace or current deployed technology exceeds its technical life, replacement of the capacity will be automatic—that is, not requiring lengthy acquisition cycles. This translates into less administrative overhead and in turn, a lower total cost of ownership.
These capacity services contracts give DISA the agility required to adjust to dynamic requirements to provide capabilities for rapid, just-in-time scaling of processing and storage to meet unanticipated needs for Web services and other warfighting demands. The support tools available allow DISA to move toward the concept of virtual or grid computing, in which applications will utilize available computing capacity irrespective of geographic location. The storage contract will provide provisioning and management of enterpriselevel storage capability ensuring data accuracy, integrity and assurance.
Sharing and Defending Information. A warfighter’s ability to leverage the right information at the right time is the difference between mission success and mission failure. These contracts will provide stateof- the-art capabilities and services that enable sharing of information through an assured, accessible net-centric storage and processing infrastructure.
Through the use of virtualization technologies, DISA CS will be able to provision servers quickly and securely to meet customers’ changing operational requirements. Server virtualization is not just a compelling need for server consolidation, but it has become a most important ally for security managers, simplifying a wide range of tasks from disaster recovery to forensic analysis, up to intrusion detection and prevention. Virtual infrastructure is required for self-defending and self-healing data centers.
These environments and shared SAN resources will provide high-availability computing to help ensure reliable information delivery to the warfighters. SAN virtualization will allow joining of disparate storage elements into common pools thereby enabling better central management and efficient use of storage resources.
Standardized data replication services for distributed SAN environments will be available to support both real-time and snapshot data services for COOP and business continuity needs. Content addressable storage will provide searchable storage services for relatively static data, helping customers with long term reporting requirements satisfy document retention regulations. To better support geographically dispersed locations, these contracts will offer wide area file services, which permit users to quickly access and share files consolidated at DECCs over the WAN at LAN speed.
Servers and storage provisioned under these contracts will meet DoD 8500.2 security requirements and support FIPS 140-2 encryption protocols to protect customer data at all levels within the enterprise. The capacity services and storage contracts will enable encryption of data at rest and in transit.
Best Value. These contracts have performance metrics that track use and cost of processing and storage. The contracts also have a semi-annual review, where cost drivers are managed against predetermined performance metrics. As efficiencies are realized, DISA will then be able to incorporate them in the form of better rates charged to their customers.
“DISA leadership is continually asking: How can we better serve our customers?” said Caryle Faust, chief of the infrastructure division for DISA Computing Services. “This new contract allows computing services to be more agile in delivering capacity; lowers the cost to the taxpayer (they no longer pay for unused capacity); and should decrease the amount of downtime with the software tools available.”
“We in DISA believe information is the greatest source of military power,” said Croom. “We are dedicating ourselves to change where change gives us speed. We are dedicating ourselves to metrics where facts lead us to better decisions. And we are dedicating ourselves to stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
LOOKING FORWARD
Now that a utility-based model is in place to support processing and storage requirements, what’s to prevent extending this concept across other areas that support data center operations? One possibility may be software. Significant resources of any application hosting environment are devoted to licensing and software maintenance costs. By adopting a utility, “pay for what you use” methodology, clearly there should be some significant opportunities. Communications devices and supporting infrastructure may be yet another area to explore.
The warfighters are counting on us to deliver capabilities as quickly and as efficiently as we possibly can; in most cases, they need it now. With these new capacity service vehicles pioneered by DISA Computing services, we have the means to come very close to that goal. ♦
