IBM Lands Air Force Cloud Computing Contract

IBM on Thursday said it has been awarded a contract to design a secure cloud-computing infrastructure for the U.S. Air Force.

The 10-month project will challenge IBM (NYSE: IBM) to introduce advanced cyber security and analytics technologies in the cloud that can support high-level defense and intelligence networks.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

If it succeeds, the implementation will provide IBM with an ideal case study to present to private sector companies that want to transition away from on-site applications but are still leery of the security risks associated with cloud computing.

IBM will be required to meet security standards established by the government’s Information Assurance guidelines for all networks. The Air Force says its network manages the operations of nine major commands, almost 100 bases and 700,000 active military personnel worldwide.

“Our goal is to demonstrate how cloud computing can be a tool to enable our Air Force to manage, monitor and secure the information flowing through our network,” Lt. Gen. William Lord, CIO and chief of warfighting integration of the Secretary of the Air Force, said in a statement.

Staffers at IBM Research will work with software architects, security experts and analytics experts as well as military personnel to develop the infrastructure, using sensors and detection devices that will monitor the safety and performance of the network in real time.

It will also feature autonomic computing to self-manage the network and enable virtual cloud services to be managed remotely. The goal is to build a system capable of “retuning” itself for optimal performance without human intervention.

IBM officials said customized, executive-level dashboards will be used to deliver up-to-the-second information on the health and status of the network and facilitate decision-making. This instant access to information, for example, would enable Air Force officials to automatically shift the prevention environment based on rules-based protocols in the event of a cyber attack or network anomalies.

Entering what many analysts are calling the decade of the cloud, IBM, HP, EMC, Google, Microsoft are all racing to form partnerships and build application-delivery platforms to service on-demand customers.

In December, Big Blue scored a huge contract with SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest telecommunications provider, to build and operate the first private sector cloud-computing environment in Korea.

The company in October unveiled its Smart Business Storage Cloud, a private cloud-based storage and archiving application for enterprise customers.

Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020