[RVRC] E-mail via "the Cloud"

[Marvin Bronstein]

>From "Worldradio" Magazine, June, 2011;



Email in the Cloud

You might be getting a message one of these days with a

puzzling @mail.mil return address. Give it a little respect

because @mail.mil could become the stuff of digital history.

It is the callsign (so to speak) of the U.S. Army’s new

Enterprise Email service provider-in-the-sky. Starting in

February, the Army began migrating all the million-plus email

accounts from several hundred local servers spread around the

globe to a single Microsoft Express 2010 megasystem operated

in what it and Microsoft call a “private cloud.”

For those just catching up on the jargon, “cloud” refers to

an invisible somewhere in which are located the software, files,

utilities and memory that formerly resided on each individual

client’s computer. In this case, the digital somewhere is an

array of five Network Service Centers operated globally by

the Defense Information Systems Agency.

There’s been a lot of talk that cloud computing will become

the wave of the future for all of us. If so, the Army’s effort to

increase security while cutting its data-handling costs bears

watching.

It’s a huge undertaking, relocating 200,000 secret and 1.4

million unclassified accounts by the end of 2011 without

interrupting service — keeping in mind email is absolutely

vital to the 24/7 conduct of two wars, not to mention homeland

security.

With its central users’ list, the sysops at NETCOM / 9th

Signal Command (Army) can instantly update or cancel access

privileges and security clearance for every person in the system

if circumstances require.

The CIO/G6 office predicts that by eliminating all the duplication,

the annual cost of a single email “seat” will drop from

more than $100 to less than $39 and the overall bill of $400

million will drop by about $100 million. That’s while increasing

each individual mailbox’s capacity from the current 100M

to 4G. – N1IN/AAM1RD/AAR1FP