Army moves logistics processing to IBM's Hybrid Cloud

The Army has moved its global logistics system, one of the largest in the federal government, to IBM’s Hybrid Cloud, which adds data analytics and other features to the system’s 40 million daily transactions in order to increase efficiency.

The service’s Logistics Support Activity, known as LOGSA, supports more than 65,000 users and 150 trading partners around the world and began using the IBM cloud last year, according to an announcement this week by the company. Since making the change, the Army has seen cost savings of 50 percent, IBM said.

LOGSA is based at the Army Materiel Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and hosts the Logistics Information Warehouse, which delivers equipment and other supplies to troops around the world. Connecting the hybrid cloud to the Army’s on-premise environment—and integrating it with other Army systems—gives LOGSA data analytics and data mining tools that can improve its response times while adding enterprise scale, better security and greater reliability, the company said.

“The Army not only recognized a trend in IT that could transform how they deliver services to their logistics personnel around the world, they also implemented a cloud environment quickly and are already experiencing significant benefits,” said Anne Altman, general manager for U.S. Federal at IBM. “They’re taking advantage of the inherent benefits of hybrid cloud: security and the ability to connect it with an existing IT system. It also gives the Army the flexibility to incorporate new analytics services and mobile capabilities.”