Puckett put the Army on track to deliver ‘common cloud services that people love’

The military now has a community of believers when it comes to cloud computing.

That wasn’t always the case, especially three years ago when the Office of the Chief Information Officer launched what it thought would be a temporary cloud oversight office.

Paul Puckett, former director of the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency (ECMA) in the Office of the Army CIO, said his organization helped plant the seeds to create a field of cloud services and believers across the Army.

“We see a community now that, quite frankly, exists to be able to learn and measure how quickly they can listen and react and deliver a capability that is better,” Puckett said during a “wrap-up” interview on ask the CIO. “When you start to contrast that with what it was a few years ago, you now find some of our most capable and mission-critical systems leveraging the cloud that are not only proving value, but also fundamentally changing the way we view requirements, the organization, alignment, and incentive structures for tactical mission command systems. What three years ago, that quote, ‘I would never go to the cloud,’ is not only in the cloud, but is the catalyst for hybrid cloud capabilities for the Army, has been proving value within a cloud ecosystem tactical and edge cloud. for the last year and a half now.”

Puckett, whose last day with ECMA was in late November as he completed a three-year tenure, said the success driven by the organization, especially with some early adopters and then through initiatives like cArmyCloud Account Management Optimization (CAMO) and the soon to be awarded Enterprise Application Modernization and Migration (EAMM) multi-award contract.

“Now we have a change in mindset and skills, and we have a learning community, a learning organization that values ​​its ability to respond to people’s feedback, rather than its ability to predict the future and hold a line.” said. “In some of the most critical and complex ecosystems, the value of cloud computing from an enterprise, tactical, and edge ecosystem is clear, and frankly, I couldn’t be more proud of what the community has done over the last three years. years”.

ERP to the cloud

An example of that value that the cloud brought to the Army’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Puckett said that the success of moving ERPs to the cloud demonstrated that they were secure, operational and available, and that ECMA helped empower the team running those systems to modernize capabilities more quickly and easily.

The Army is now taking that success and moving towards a more modular open architecture that will help simplify what many say is a complex ERP ecosystem.

From that success, Puckett said, other opportunities have arisen to take advantage of the cloud, especially tactically.

“The 18th Airborne Corps with Project Ridgway, which is beginning to be emulated throughout the 1^st3^rd and 5th Corps. I think you’ll start to see, really, some structures start to take hold, and people are really leaning towards the tactical side of the house,” he said. “

Ridgway Project focuses on training and educating soldiers on data platforms and in the cloud. The hope is that the Airborne will be an AI-enabled workforce conversant enough to be able to use new technologies faster, and as soon as they get into the hands of soldiers.

To get to this point, Puckett began with a simple but bold goal of offering common cloud services that people love.

He said that initially the response was: “No, you are not. What is the second option?

But part of ECMA’s charge was to change the culture of the Army by understanding what cloud services can provide, the security benefits, and the tactical and operational impact cloud can have on the service.

“What I found is a number of organizations, a number of people who saw the cloud opportunity, so they were a great partner. But there were things that they had to understand, things that they had to learn, and questions that needed to be answered in a very clear way that actually helped them gain confidence, be able to defend, and be able to access resources, and then be able to go and spend time on doing things to demonstrate a measurably better way and a different way of delivering capacity leveraging the cloud,” Puckett said. “I am exceptionally proud of this community that we have built, which is much bigger than ECMA. I think if you look at the strategy of buying, security, building, and if you look at the common services around the common cloud, the common software, and the common data services, I’m exceptionally proud that we’ve moved the ball on all of those . We are certainly more mature on the safe and home-buying side of the house with CAMO and cArmy, and EAMM coming soon. But if you think about it in that order, we really needed to learn a lot in the cArmy domain and the CAMO domain, for something like EAMM to really have strong roots in order to grow.”

Cost savings, cloud avoidance

And those strong roots are already creating the foundation for the cloud and the benefits it brings.

Puckett said ECMA-led digital transformation efforts have already generated millions of dollars in cost savings or avoidance simply by using CAMO to more efficiently purchase cloud services.

“The structure that we have created at CAMO is something I am very proud of, and I am very proud of that team, as there are very few Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) that you can join every month in the end. , they all turn, look at each other and say: ‘this is so much fun. And I love what I do. That’s a really cool thing to say and do,” he said. “When it comes to cArmy, I think this idea of ​​providing services that people love is critical. They don’t care about mandates or policies to use cArmy, we want people to use it because it adds value to their lives and they can focus on their mission. We want people to love those services. So I’m exceptionally proud of what we’ve built at cArmy and both that model and how it’s growing with common services and secure cloud computing architecture where we look at modernized architectures as we move toward zero trust architecture and the implications when it comes to all sorts of network-specific zero-trust components.”

As for what’s next for Puckett, he said he plans to return to the industry by either supporting the national defense sector or supporting the highly regulated sectors around critical infrastructure.

The army tried to keep Puckett and offered him the position of director of technology. But he said the time was right to go back and learn more about the industry.

“I see a lot of value in getting out of your comfort zone and going into other cultures and trying to be a bridge,” she said. “We often talked about the great ‘valley of death,’ so to speak, between emerging technologies and the Department of Defense. I think there is immense value in trying to bridge that valley of death, getting out of your comfort zone, immersing yourself in other cultures, learning from those cultures, being able to share the culture you come from, and then take that relearn with you again in government. So I feel like the time is right to get back into the industry, face a different challenge.”