Migrating the SECDEF Communications Team to the Cloud

Abstract

The Secretary of Defense controls the three combat branches of the United States armed forces while at home and abroad. One of the primary purposes of the office is to build, strengthen, and maintain U.S. relations with other nations and their Defense Ministers. This means that the Secretary is often away from the Pentagon and requires extensive deployed communication capabilities in order to perform his duties. The 844th Communications Squadron (CS), located at Joint Base Andrews, is responsible for ensuring that the Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense have those communications capabilities while on the road. To provide this support, the 844th CS deploys ahead of the Secretary and establishes a communications room to be utilized while in the area. In order to complete their mission, the 844th CS personnel require access to data that is currently located on legacy servers located at the Pentagon. The team's goal with this project is to build a new data solution using cloud technology in order to replace the legacy servers (which will remain as backups to the cloud). This will create a new continuity of operations plan (COOP) for the 844th CS to ensure that they are able to support the Secretary of Defense`s mission needs.