Defence has struck a multi-year agreement with Google Cloud for “air-gapped hyperscale cloud” services that will underpin two key projects in ICT and command-and-control.
(L-R) – Paul Migliorini (Google Cloud), Umesh Vemuri (Google Cloud), LTGEN Susan Coyle, Chief of Joint Capabilities and Chris Crozier, CIO.
Image Credit: Kym Smith / Defence
The department struck the “deed of standing offer” late on Friday, saying the cloud capacity would support its projects codenamed DEF 2222 and JP 9111.
Both come under a broader program called the Defence Secret Environment or DSE, which a July blog post on LinkedIn characterised as a “unification” of Defence’s secure computing environments.
“This program includes key workstreams such as application discovery, DevSecOps pipeline development, and secure data migration,” the blog post by a DXC Technology managing partner states.
“Defence [is moving] away from fragmented legacy hosting and towards an agile, cloud-native future, designed to meet both sovereign control and classified assurance requirements.”
A closed tender further describes DSE as “Defence’s sovereign operational level warfighting network, and … an essential component of Defence’s military capability.”
It states that Defence Digital Group (DDG) – which is Defence’s ICT organisation – identified the future DSE as a critical input to deliver on the 2024 national defence strategy.
JP 9111, meanwhile, “aims to provide a Joint Command and Control (Joint C2) information environment to support the planning and execution of operations and exercises at all levels of command, either independently, as part of an Australian-led coalition, or as a component of a wider Five Eyes coalition,” according to tender notes from 2018.
Defence said in a statement that the capacity from Google would “support faster rollout of critical systems, ongoing upgrades and improved cooperation with international partners, while ensuring Australia retains control of critical Defence assets.”
The department said that it was particularly interested in edge capacity and the ability to use hyperscale cloud to “embrace” AI to “help enable faster, smarter, and more secure Defence operations.”
It declined to be more specific about the environment “due to sensitivities surrounding this capability.”