Head on the heels of Microsoft Azure’s announcement of its achievement of Provisional Authority Level 5 accreditation for the Department of Defense, IBM detailed its finalization of a five year contract with the U.S. army that has the potential to amount to $62M. Under the terms of the contract, IBM will create a private cloud solution for the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal, which is located close to Huntsville, Alabama. IBM will deliver Infrastructure as a Service solutions for the Redstone Arsenal facility as part of the Army Private Cloud Enterprise program. The army plans to migrate up to 35 applications to the U.S. army during the first year of the private cloud. IBM’s ability to win this contract with the army was predicated on securing the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Impact Level 5 (IL-5) Provisional Authorization. IBM is the first company to obtain Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Impact Level 5 (IL-5) Provisional Authorization and plans are in place for it to achieve Level 6 authorization, which would enable it to manage classified information in contrast to the ability to manage controlled unclassified information as a result of its Level 5 certification. IBM’s contract with the U.S. army to develop and manage a private cloud for its Redstone Arsenal builds upon its success delivering a hybrid cloud solution for the U.S. Army’s Logistics Support Activity. The deal consolidates IBM’s leadership as a cloud contractor for the U.S. military and suggestively illustrates further potentialities for the expansion of IBM’s cloud market share via cloud-related U.S. military use cases.
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